Film Review: Hamnet

Welcome back to the blog readers. As you know, I am currently on my "Best Picture Expedition," in which I venture to watch every film nominated for Best Picture. This is honestly the film I have been waiting for, since the frontrunner to win Best Actress is nominated for it. Besides the main performances, I am a fan of the director of this film, having liked her last two films. Would this be the film that gets me on board with her and her chances for Best Picture/Director? Stick around to find out.

Hamnet was directed by Chloé Zhao from a screenplay by Zhao and Maggie O'Farrell, based on the 2020 novel Hamnet by O'Farrell. The film stars Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson, Joe Alwyn, Jacobi Jupe, and Noah Jupe. The film dramatizes the family life of William and Agnes Shakespeare, from their marriage to their coping of the death of their 11-year-old son Hamnet.

As I just mentioned in my introductory paragraph, Jessie Buckley is currently the favorite to win Best Actress at the Oscars since she has swept awards season thus far. Not only that, but Zhao has created herself a neat little resume with Nomadland (2020) and Eternals (2021) under her belt. I went into this film with some hype, and I was met with a film that was utterly fantastic. The performances of Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal were award-worthy, as was the script, but the pacing is my only real issue.

Jessie Buckley is one of those actors that you really did not know before 2020. Her turn in the film The Lost Daughter (2021) brought international attention to her as she was nominated for her first Oscar. She has also appeared in I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020), Men, Scrooge: A Christmas Carol, and Women Talking (all 2022). But her turn as Agnes Shakespeare is one of the most emotionally visceral, tonally haunting, and powerfully raw performances I have ever seen. I cannot believe that this is my first time seeing Buckley in anything, because her name will be on my radar now. She delivers a performance so vulnerable that it cannot be described in words. I kid you not, she almost made me tear up twice. From my bedroom. She is absolutely winning Best Actress and she absolutely deserves to.

And now, we have to talk about the performance of Paul Mescal. Mescal is someone who has been on my radar ever since his Oscar nomination for the film Aftersun (2022), and rose to greater recognition for his role in Gladiator II (2024). He has since taken on the daunting task of bringing to the screen Paul McCartney in 2028 and wowing me as possibly the greatest playwright to ever live: William Shakespeare. I found Mescal's performance to be just as heartbreaking and mesmerizing as Buckley's, and his portrayal of grief through artistic expression is one that is powerful in scale. How the hell did he not get nominated for best Supporting Actor for this? He should have been.

Finally for the positives, I want to talk about the script of the film. As I mentioned, the script is written by Zhao and Maggie O'Farrell, and it really shows what kinds of things Zhao can do when she is left to her own devices. Just look at films like Nomadland and Eternals, two films that really show off her artistic vision. Here, in this film, we get a real and raw look at grief and how it affects different people. This is one of my favorite themes to look at in a film, because you really get to see what drives a person to grieve. I love how sharp it is, and how much of the play Hamlet is used in the script for this film. It is nice getting to see the "to be, or not to be" bit used.

If I was going to express one bit of dissatisfaction with this film, I think it would absolutely have to be the pacing of the film. As you may know, I think 2025 was a terrible year for films having really bad pacing issues. And you can tell it was the case because I mentioned it in every other film review I put out in 2025. And it again is the case here, where I believe we spend way too much time dealing with the family life of the Shakespeare family and not enough time dealing with the main issue of the film: Hamnet's death (that does not happen until more than halfway through the film). I just wish more time was spent on the grieving process.

In conclusion, Hamnet is a somber and heart-shattering look at the power of grief, told from the lens of the most famous literary figure to ever live. Thank you all for reading, and I will see you for the next post.