Jessie Buckley lifts Hamnet from a good-not-great period drama into something quietly devastating. Chloe Zhao builds the frame, steady and respectful, and Buckley fills it with force. Even when the film’s early stretches feel tidy and overdetermined, her Agnes keeps pulling you forward, a presence so alive that the later heartbreak lands with the weight it needs.
Agnes is the forest-bred daughter of a rumored witch, more attuned to the world’s small currents than to the gossip that circles her. Her tutor, William Shakespeare, played by Paul Mescal with a polite reserve that deepens as the story turns, falls for her calm intelligence. The union has little approval from his family, but it takes root anyway. They build a life and three children arrive: Susanna, Judith, and Hamnet.
Zhao stages domestic rhythms with clean, unfussy cuts and a patient eye. You feel the grind of the work and the tiny bursts of pleasure that keep it bearable. Agnes sees that William cannot thrive in manual labor, and she nudges him toward London and the theater. He goes, and the camera stays with the household he leaves behind. The choice pays off later, even if the first half can feel like a careful march through biopic beats.
The plague arrives while William is away. Judith weakens. Hamnet’s wish to trade places circles the script like a superstition that the world is willing to honor. The film keeps the mechanics of that switch hazy, and it is better for it. What matters is the hole that remains. Grief stories are everywhere right now, and this one risks blandness in the middle passages, but Buckley keeps finding gestures that make the loss specific.
Mescal’s work grows as Agnes pulls away. His William is not a monster or a saint, only a man who returns to a home he barely recognizes and reaches for the only tool he trusts. That choice is the hinge. He writes a tragedy and names it for the son who is gone. Agnes takes the news as a betrayal, which is understandable and painful. Then the play arrives.
The third act is the film’s reason for being. Zhao lets the camera rest on Buckley as she watches the staging of grief transformed into art, and the scene builds without tricks. You see recognition, anger, surrender, and a new kind of love move across her face in real time. It is one of the most purely cinematic passages of the year, sentiment earned rather than announced. The movie almost levitates.
Visually and sonically this is less meditative than Nomadland, and it carries a bit of the polished sheen that crept into Eternals. The craft is handsome rather than radical, which may explain why the early going feels careful. The payoff justifies the restraint. Zhao returns to ground level by the end, and the actors meet her there.
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Hamnet is uneven, sometimes too tidy and sometimes too hushed, yet it closes with a knockout. Jessie Buckley gives a performance that reframes everything around it, and Paul Mescal matches her once the material lets him. The last act is worth the price of admission on its own, a clean and crushing argument for how art can hold the unsayable.
Score: 7/10
Hamnet (2025)
- Cast: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson, Jacobi Jupe, Joe Alwyn, David Wilmot, Bodhi Rae Breathnach, Olivia Lynes, Noah Jupe
- Director: Chloé Zhao
- Genre: Drama, Romance
- Runtime: 126 minutes
- Rated: PG-13
- Release Date: December 5, 2025
- Movies Like Hamnet: Train Dreams, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Eternity
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