Cinema Review: Hamnet (2025)
Directed by Chloé Zhao
Screenplay by Chloé Zhao & Maggie O’Farrell – Based on Hamnet
by Maggie O’Farrell
Produced by Liza Marshall, Pippa Harris, Nicolas Gonda, Steven Spielberg & Sam Mendes
Main cast: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson, Joe Alwyn, David Wilmot, Jacobi Jupe, Olivia Lynes, etc.
Cinematography by Łukasz Żal
There are actors who impress, and then there is Jessie Buckley, who seems to detonate the screen every time she appears. From the feral menace and vulnerability of Beast (2017) to the raw, soul-baring musical grit of Wild Rose (2018), Buckley has proven herself fearless; from the existential unravelling of I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020) to her razor-sharp, unclassifiable turn in Fargo (2020) – Season 4, and the aching restraint of Fingernails (2023), her work consistently redefines what emotional truth on screen can look like. Now, with an earth-shattering rendition of Agnes Shakespeare in Hamnet (2025), Buckley doesn’t just command attention—she claims her place as one of the most electrifying actors of her generation.
Hamnet (2025) is an adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s critically acclaimed novel is a quietly thunderous piece of cinema—one that chooses intimacy over spectacle and emotion over mythology. At its core is the relationship between Agnes and William Shakespeare, charted from their first, tentative connection through marriage, parenthood, and the fractures that emerge when love collides with loss and ambition.
The film is less concerned with the legend of Shakespeare than with the human beings behind it: a scholar and poet struggling to find his literary voice, set against Agnes, a woman of the land and forest, spiritually attuned to nature, instinct, and ritual. Their romance blooms in the space between these worlds, with Agnes’s chanting communion with the natural world acting as an unspoken counterpoint to Will’s search for language and form.
Director Chloé Zhao brings her signature elegance and patience to the material, allowing moments to breathe and emotions to surface organically. Her collaboration with cinematographer Łukasz Żal results in imagery that feels almost painterly—soft, natural light spilling across interiors and fields, rendering the English countryside as something tactile and alive. Every frame seems steeped in earth, wind, and time, reinforcing the film’s grounding in the physical and the elemental.
At the centre of it all is Jessie Buckley, delivering a stunningly embodied performance as Agnes. Her work is raw, intuitive, and deeply moving—she plays grief not as a single rupture but as a living force that reshapes the body and spirit. Paul Mescal brings a quiet intelligence and aching restraint to William, capturing the tension between domestic devotion and creative restlessness, while the incredible, Jacobi Jupe, as the young son, Hamnet, adds genuine emotional resonance, grounding the family dynamic with heart-breaking sincerity.
Hamnet (2025) is ultimately a powerhouse drama about family, grief, and the curative—often painful—power of the creative process. It understands art not as triumph but as transformation, something born from love and loss in equal measure. My one reservation is a personal one: I found myself wanting more of Shakespeare’s journey in London and his struggle toward theatrical success and subsequent writing on the classic, Hamlet. But this absence is deliberate and understandable. The film is weighted toward the emotional interiority of Agnes’s experience, and in centring her perspective—so exquisitely rendered by Buckley—Hamnet (2025) finds its true, devastating strength.
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