Chloé Zhao's 'Hamnet': A Poignant Exploration of Love and Loss

(l-r) Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal

By Darlene Donloe

Chloé Zhao’s film ‘Hamnet’ is beautifully shot and emotionally raw, featuring standout performances. Jessie Buckley's portrayal of the lead is particularly noteworthy, showcasing her skill in conveying intense emotions while maintaining control. Her performance is a highlight of the film, and it's clear why she's getting attention for her role.

Before we get there, we have a pastoral meet-cute between Paul Mescal’s William Shakespeare. A struggling Latin tutor, and the instinctive earth spirit this project imagines Agnes Hathaway (elsewhere, often Anne Hathaway) to have been. We first see her coiled beneath a tree, as a fox might rest after a successful hunt.

Zhao, who co-wrote the script with O'Farrell, presents a narrative that connects Agnes to nature through a primal feminine impulse. The cinematography, led by Lukasz Zal, captures the Welsh landscapes in a way that immerses the viewer in the story's world, blending elements of folklore with the natural environment.

Will, who will spend much of the film in smelly London, is more a figure of early modernity: practical, contained, undemonstrative. One can hardly imagine better casting than Mescal. The two are East Midlands yin and yang. Buckley’s face has a muscular dexterity that can practically turn itself upside down. Mescal’s steadiness, at its best, asks more questions than it answers.

The couple’s families are not happy with the union, but the two marry, nonetheless, and Agnes gives birth first to Susanna and then to twins, Judith and Hamnet. As Will tastes success in the English capital, the bubonic plague – O’Farrell’s admired novel was, appropriately, published in the pandemic year – oozes its way towards Stratford and eventually gathers poor Hamnet to the fathers.

The closing third is where the film really ratchets its emotional grip, but it is also where a few conspicuous flaws emerge. 

A scene in which a despairing Will speaks Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy to the Thames is hopelessly on the nose, akin to the hero of a rock biopic hearing someone speak the title of an as-yet-unwritten signature hit.

Indeed, the efforts to tie the personal tragedy in with the content of that play – “Hamnet” and “Hamlet” were, a title card explains, essentially the same name – ultimately prove too much of a strain.

“Hamnet,” currently in theaters, stars Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson, Joe Alwyn, Jacobi Jupe, Olivia Lynes, Justine Mitchell, David Wilmot, Louisa Harland, Freya Hannan-Mills.

On the DONLOE SCALE: D (don’t bother), O (oh, no), N (needs work), L (likable), O (oh, yeah), and E (excellent), ‘Hamnet’ gets an E (excellent).

Running Time: 2 hrs 5 mins