Film REVIEW: Hamnet (2025) - ★★★★★

Mix Up Theatre (Stewart)
36 minutes ago
5 min read

Steel yourself for Chloé Zhao’s (Eternals)“shattering” Oscar-tipped drama about the tragedy that drove Shakespeare to write his masterpiece. From the Hamnet release date to a cast starring Paul Mescal, and Jessie Buckley (The Courier, Dolittle), check out our quickfire guide.

Director: Chloe Zhao

Writer: Chloe Zhao, Maggie O'Farrell

based on Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell

Stars: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson, Joe Alwyn.

Genre: Drama, Biography, History

Themes: William Shakespeare, Wife, Tragedy

After losing their son Hamnet to plague, Agnes and William Shakespeare grapple with grief in 16th-century England. A healer, Agnes must find strength to care for her surviving children while processing her devastating loss.

Critical reception was positive, with Buckley's performance receiving particular praise.

MIX UP REVIEWS:

Stewart - ★★★★★

"A beautiful piece of work which is emotionally devastating - so prepare yourself for it. Jessie Buckley give an ethereal, haunting performance which will stay with you for a long time.

The recreation of Shakespeare in rehearsals is very well done and thrilling to see, special shout out to Noah Jupe in the later scenes as the actor portraying Hamlet on stage.

Should pick up a few awards over the season. Stunning film, but maybe not one you'll want to revisit too many times as the themes of grief and tragedy really pull at the heart strings."

Have you seen it?

Hamnet buzz - Why is everybody talking about the new Hamnet movie?

Our mental image of William Shakespeare has been shaped by centuries of popular culture. Perhaps you picture The Bard as the pattern-bald man of letters from the old £20 note. Or maybe you’re thinking of the Shakey impersonators outside ye olde Stratford-upon-Avon souvenir shops, flogging novelty neck-ruffs to American tourists.

There have been films made before about this rock star version of Shakespeare – to the point where the mythology has almost swallowed the man. But Chloé Zhao’s acclaimed adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel Hamnet – no, that’s not a typo – is the first to present Shakespeare as a living, breathing, bleeding, grieving human being.

“I was very grateful that the book is interested in the man rather than the kind of myth of Shakespeare,” says Paul Mescal, who plays the lead alongside Jessie Buckley’s equally important Agnes Hathaway. “It's interested in the husband, the father, and that all felt very accessible, and I felt like I could prepare for that. I wouldn't know where to start if I was playing a genius writer.”

Is the book Hamnet being made into a movie?

Maggie O’Farrell’s fictional account of Shakespeare and Hathaway’s son Hamnet – who really did exist, but died aged 11 in 1596 – won it all in 2020, from the Women's Prize for Fiction and National Book Critics Circle Award For Fiction to Waterstones' Book Of The Year.

“That book – it’s just devastating,” Paul Mescal told Vogue. As for Chloé Zhao, she wouldn’t have dared adapt Hamnet if the Northern Irish novelist hadn’t come aboard as co-screenwriter. As she told The LA Times: “Maggie’s book laid the foundation.”

Zhao added at a Deadline panel discussion that she felt an immediate connection with the source material: “The book itself is very immersive, almost as if I’ve edited it. lt feels like Maggie has the same rhythm, the same heartbeat as me as an editor, and that was an amazing experience.”

Is Hamnet based on a true story? Hamnet plot explained

Hamnet is not strictly a true story, but Chloé Zhao’s movie certainly has grains of historical fact. The plot turns around Will (Mescal) and Agnes (Buckley), dealing with local disapproval of their love affair and the loss of their real-life son, Hamnet. Many scholars believe the tragedy was the making of Shakespeare the playwright, igniting his great tragedy of (almost) the same name, Hamlet, first performed in 1599.

Just don’t expect a neat and tidy narrative, with Zhao’s fantastical and stylised treatment proving utterly beguiling on the big screen. “I don't think, if Will was alive, he would want a film made just as a temple to him,” Paul Mescal told Gold Derby. “I think he would want a complicated, messy version, because that's what all of his plays are.”

Cast of the Hamnet film - Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal in Hamnet

As Chloé Zhao told Rolling Stone, she knew at their first meeting that Mescal had the right stuff. “I thought, ‘This is somebody who can channel something for me’. Shakespeare’s work, it’s very violent, it’s very dark, it’s very masculine, for better or worse, so I wanted somebody who is not afraid to go to a place that, in today’s climate, might seem toxic or dark.”

Mescal gives a performance every bit as powerful – but from a totally different angle – to 2022’s career-best Aftersun, telling Variety he tapped into the character’s “animal quality”. Meanwhile, many critics have cited Jessie Buckley’s raw, wounded portrayal of Agnes as the most primal performance we’ve seen for years.

As the ctress told the Irish Times: “It really reminded me of how potent and powerful storytelling can be. And it’s kind of set a bar, like, I only want to make films that are as brave and as human as this from now on.”

The supporting cast of the Hamnet film also features Emily Watson (The Theory of Everything, Corpse Bride) as Mary Shakespeare, Joe Alwyn (Operation Finale, Harriet) as Bartholomew Hathaway, David Wilmot (Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, King Arthur) as John Shakespeare, Jacobi Jupe (Peter Pan & Wendy, Tom Jones) as Hamnet Shakespeare, Olivia Lynes as Judith Shakespeare, Bodhi Rae Breathnach as Susanna Shakespeare, Freya Hannan-Mills as Eliza Shakespeare, Dainton Anderson as Edmund Shakespeare, Elliot Baxter (Andor) as Richard Shakespeare, and Noah Jupe (Le Mans '66, Wonder) as Hamlet.

Hamnet age rating - Who can watch the Hamnet movie?

Hamnet isn’t especially violent, but the movie explores upsetting adult themes and the final scene is described by World Of Reel as “shattering”. The 12A rating means there’s nothing to stop emotionally mature children attending – but there are probably better options for a pre-teen birthday party.

Hamnet review score - What do the critics say about the Hamnet movie?

Hamnet premiered at the 52nd Telluride Film Festival and the critics are purring. “Mescal is wonderful as the Bard," writes The Hollywood Reporter’s Angie Han. “But it’s Buckley who really stuns, as she evolves Agnes from the free-spirited girl of the grass to the loving wife and mother to the brittle and grieving woman.”

“Hamnet has managed to make the lines ‘goodnight, sweet prince’ somehow sting more than ever,” says Rolling Stone’s David Fear, “but it leaves you in a state of emotional bliss. Death is inevitable, the movie tells us, but art can help us make sense of the illogical notion that we’re here one second, then gone the next.”

As for Bilge Ebiri of Vulture, Hamnet is simply “devastating, maybe the most emotionally shattering movie I've seen in years”.

Hamnet trivia - What's a fun fact about the Hamnet film?

Zhao initially turned down Hamnet. “I said, ‘I just can’t think of anyone that can play Shakespeare, that level of an archetypal force’,” the Nomadland Oscar-winner told Rolling Stone. “Then I got a call from my team, and they said, ‘There’s an actor named Paul Mescal who’d like to meet with you.’ I Googled him. I saw his face. I was like, ‘Oh, interesting…’”

Hamnet is in cinemas now – shut out the modern world, letting you live and breathe this gut-punch 16th century drama. “It proves a lovely experience,” writes The Guardian’s Richard Lawson, “to sob in a movie theater alongside strangers, mourning for Agnes and William’s loss and for our own, amazed and relieved that a faraway, unknowable person has made something to connect us all…”

How do you rate these movies?...