HAMNET: The Grief Shakespeare Never Wrote About
How long does it take to get over losing a child? Shakespeare wrote Hamlet four years after losing his son Hamnet. Chloé Zhao (Nomadland, Eternals) responds with Hamnet, her adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel that shifts the entire perspective: it’s not the story of a tormented genius writing his masterpiece, but of a mother’s pain watching her husband turn their dead son into entertainment for nobles. Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal are Agnes and William Shakespeare in a film about grief, creativity, and the distance that opens between two people who process loss in completely opposite ways.
Hamnet is a film about Agnes, wife of a young William Shakespeare, struggling to save their son Hamnet during a plague epidemic in 1596 England. The story jumps between two timelines: the present, where Hamnet falls ill and Agnes tries to cure him with herbs and rituals, and four years later, when William premieres Hamlet in London while Agnes remains trapped in grief. It’s not a movie about Shakespeare writing his most famous play. It’s about a woman who loses her son and discovers her husband immortalized him without asking if she wanted to remember him that way. The plague, Elizabethan theater, and the wheat fields of Stratford-upon-Avon are the setting, but Agnes is the center.
Jessie Buckley deserves every award. She makes grief physical, visible, unbearable to watch. She doesn’t cry dramatically, she cries like real people cry: face broken, soundless, in the middle of household tasks. Paul Mescal builds a Shakespeare who flees his family because he doesn’t know how to sit still with pain. The chemistry between them works even in silence, especially in a scene where they argue without saying anything, only through looks in an empty room. Chloé Zhao films with her usual contemplative style, but here she uses it to suffocate you: the interiors of Shakespeare’s house close in like a trap, the open fields provide no relief. Chayse Irvin’s cinematography makes everything look blurred at the edges, as if you’re seeing through tears. Max Richter’s score (the composer of Sleep) repeats the same piano notes until they hurt.
The second act drags. It’s twenty minutes of Agnes walking through fields, staring at windows, touching Hamnet’s objects that you didn’t need to see so many times to understand she’s devastated. Zhao trusts contemplative silence too much and forgets that grief also needs to breathe, change rhythm, give the viewer a break. The four-years-later timeline, with William in London, feels disconnected from the rest. It doesn’t add much beyond confirming what you already knew: he processes by writing, she doesn’t. There’s a scene where William explains to Agnes why he wrote Hamlet that should be the emotional climax of the film, but it arrives late and resolves too quickly. You’re left waiting for a bigger confrontation that never comes.
Maggie O’Farrell wrote Hamnet in 2020 and won the Women’s Prize for Fiction. The novel prioritizes Agnes’s perspective, a woman practically erased from Shakespeare’s official history. Zhao adapts with fidelity to that feminist approach: William is a secondary character, almost a ghost, while Agnes occupies every frame. If you saw Nomadland, you’ll recognize the style: long takes, natural light, actors moving slowly through real spaces. The difference is here Zhao works with studio budget and historical locations in England. The result is technically impeccable but emotionally uneven. It works better when intimate than when trying to be epic.
Hamnet is worth every minute if you understand it’s not a film about Shakespeare, but about what it costs to stay alive after losing someone. It’s for people who’ve lost something important and need to see that pain reflected on screen without manipulation or easy catharsis. It’s not for those seeking a traditional Shakespeare biopic or a period thriller with intrigue. Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal deliver devastating performances in a story that leaves you with an open wound.
Is it possible to forgive someone who turned your worst moment into art?
