Hamnet: Visceral and Moving Adaptation by Chloé Zhao (Film review)

It feels like every time I see Jessie Buckley, I come away thinking of her performance as being career defining. Again with Hamnet, it feels like Buckley has hit her apex.

The film is adapted from the 2020 historical fiction novel of the same name by Maggie O’Farrell and tells a speculative story of how William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) used personal grief to write the tragedy Hamlet. This is the second-time director Chloé Zhao has tapped into literature to develop a screenplay, Oscar winning Nomadland being the first.

Like Shakespeare’s own writing, the film is rooted in forbidden love, with William, who is a tutor working to pay off his father’s debt, falling for Agnes Hathaway (Buckley), daughter of a supposed witch. Both families present disapproval of the blossoming relationship and once Agnes becomes pregnant, the match is reluctantly approved. 

It’s visceral and moving. Buckley delivers agonising depictions in her multiple birth scenes, with the viewer being made to feel every second of her suffering. The indoor birth of the twins Judith and Hamnet is a gut wrenching piece of cinema that also provides a masterclass from the magnificent Emily Watson as William’s mother.

While she steals the show there is no shirking away from the acting powerhouse that is Paul Mescal. His most compelling sequence comes as a frustrated Shakespeare, punishing himself through a rehearsal scene, leaving you wondering if creative genius has consumed him fully. 

The delicate film score from Max Richter swells emotions while the cinematography from Łukasz Żal creates a contrast of the bright English countryside with the dirt and disease associated with the Elizabethan era. Ultimately it is a film full of moving performances and captures a multitude of feelings from desire, resentment, anger and bereavement. 

Hamnet is on general release now