The nominations for this year’s Golden Globe Awards, announced on Monday, included six nods for Chloé Zhao’s period drama Hamnet, adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s prize-winning novel of the same name. The Oscar predictors at Gold Derby place the film among the five likeliest to win Best Picture. Yet, as of press time, Hamnet is playing at just one Vermont theater, the Majestic 10 in Williston — one more indication of how tough it is to sell tickets to non-franchise films these days.
The deal
In 1500s England, Agnes (Jessie Buckley) lives on a farm with her brother (Joe Alwyn), flying her beloved hawk and practicing herbal remedies she learned from her late mother, who was reputedly a witch. Will (Paul Mescal), the tutor hired for Agnes’ stepmother’s sons, is instantly smitten with the free-spirited young woman. Pregnancy and marriage follow, in that order, to the consternation of Will’s mother (Emily Watson).
Destiny calls Will away to London, where he hopes to make his fortune writing for the theater. Tending the home fires, Agnes finally bonds with her mother-in-law during the difficult birth of two more children, twins Judith (Olivia Lyne) and Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe).
Agnes has always believed her dreams are prophetic; in them, she has seen two children at her deathbed, not three. As plague sweeps through Europe, the family suffers a terrible loss, which will in turn affect the development of Will’s most famous work.
Will you like it?
You’ve no doubt already deduced that “Will” is William Shakespeare, “Agnes” is Anne Hathaway and the masterwork in question is Hamlet. If I downplayed the biopic aspect, that’s because Hamnet does. For one thing, O’Farrell’s story (which she cowrote with Zhao for the screen) is mostly fictional, imagining a connection between Shakespeare’s historical son, Hamnet, who died in 1596 at age 11; and Hamlet (circa 1600). (The two names were common and interchangeable in that era.)
More importantly, Hamnet isn’t primarily Will’s story. While Mescal gives a fine performance, the first shot sets the tone: Agnes alone, communing with the forest from which her mother supposedly emerged. We meet Will from Agnes’ perspective, and he leaves the screen when he goes to London, where only a few scenes are set.
Zhao defies our expectations in other ways, too: We get no panoramas of bustling city life, only small-scale domestic scenes. Far from dazzling Agnes with words, Will claims not to be much of a talker — though he does charm her by relating the myth of Orpheus, which prefigures the grief they will share. The whole story is so remote from the Bard mythos that it’s a shock to hear occasional snatches of Shakespeare’s poetry or to see the couple’s children playacting the witches in Macbeth.
Zhao won an Oscar for Nomadland, a movie about wandering. Agnes is a wanderer, too, within a smaller radius, and the director makes the most of her natural settings. In the early courtship scenes, the detailed soundscape works on us almost subliminally, sucking us into an enchanted sylvan space that feels spiritually akin to some of Shakespeare’s settings.
In a clumsier film, Agnes might have come across as an anachronism: a feminist heroine with pagan vibes. Here, though, when she insists on giving birth in the woods, we never doubt she would do that. Buckley doesn’t skimp on grief or joy, drawing us deep into Agnes’ inner world. Her facial expressions are so eloquent that the film’s entire climax can hinge on subtle changes in the nature of Agnes’ attention.
The children, too, are natural, with no precocious dialogue or mannerisms, and their peril is heartrending. Hamnet serves as an all-too-timely reminder that the death of children was commonplace before modern medicine. Watson delivers a beautiful monologue that drives home just how familiar parents were forced to be with their worst fears.
Familiarity doesn’t mean acceptance, however. After the worst happens, Will and Agnes struggle to cope with grief in their own ways, paving the way for a final scene that could leave you sobbing.
I understand why people might feel tempted to skip Hamnet. No one wants to contemplate the death of a child. And it’s easy to dismiss the notion that Shakespeare wrote his loss into his masterwork as facile or maudlin.
Yet the film’s climactic scene, in which art and life merge, is one of the most gripping cinematic moments I’ve seen in a while. While inviting us to revisit Hamlet with new eyes, the movie also reminds us of a time when people believed in the power of art, and especially of live performance, to heal differences and bring solace. The endless squabbling on social media has made that faith crumble. But watching Hamnet, you believe again, and you feel better for it.
If you like this, try…
SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE (1998; Kanopy, Paramount+, rentable): You’ve probably already seen this earlier, more lighthearted fictional take on Shakespeare’s love life, which won a slew of Oscars.
ALL IS TRUE (2018; Roku Channel, rentable): Kenneth Branagh directed this underseen drama in which he plays an older Shakespeare who returns to Stratford-upon-Avon in 1613 to reconnect with his wife (Judi Dench) and daughters.
HAMLET (1996; Fandango at Home, Kanopy, Pluto TV, rentable): Branagh also directed and starred in the only film version that includes the play’s entire text, featuring Derek Jacobi, Julie Christie, Kate Winslet and Robin Williams. The many other filmed Hamlets range from Laurence Olivier’s classic turn to Ethan Hawke’s modern take to Andrew Scott’s 2018 performance.
This article appears in Dec 10-16 2025.
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