HAMNET : Tuesday 3rd March 2026

I finally got around to seeing the M Rated 'HAMNET' this week, some six weeks after its Australian release on 15th January. This biographical period film is Directed and Co-Edited by Chloe Zhao, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Maggie O'Farrell, and is based on the 2020 novel by O'Farrell. Chloe Zhao's previous feature film output takes in her 2015 debut with 'Songs My Brother Taught Me', which she would follow up with 'The Rider' in 2017, 'Nomadland' in 2020 and 'The Eternals' in 2021. The film had its World Premiere showcasing at the Telluride Film Festival on 29th August last year and received a limited cinema release in the USA and Canada at the end of November, before going wide on 5th December, and was released in the UK on 9th January this year. It has garnered widespread universal critical acclaim, has so far grossed US$93M from a US$35M production budget and has collected eighty-six award wins and a further 298 nominations from around the awards and festival circuit, with some of those award nods still pending a final outcome. The film is also Co-Produced by Steven Spielberg and Sam Mandes.

An opening card states that in Stratford, England in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the names Hamnet and Hamlet were considered the same, and interchangeable. We then cut to the opening scene in which Agnes (Jessie Buckley) wakes from a slumber curled up in the root of a giant tree, under which appears to be mystery cave. She then rises to her feet and summons to a hawk from high up in the tree tops to come to her landing on her falconry gloved hand. She also gathers up herbs. 

Meanwhile, William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) works as a tutor to young children to help pay off family debts which his father John (David Wilmot) incurred. He leaves his students after seeing Agnes coming out of the forest and they share a brief moment of tenderness. William's mother, Mary (Emily Watson), tells him of rumours that Agnes is the daughter of a forest witch who taught her herbal lore, which Agnes later uses to heal a small cut to William's forehead. 

William later visits Agnes in the forest. Agnes foretells William of a successful future for him, and two children at her deathbed, by pressing down on the fleshy part of his hand between thumb and forefinger. The pair consummate their relationship, impregnating Agnes, leading her family to disown her and forcing her to move into the Shakespeare household. The two marry, and Agnes gives birth to Susanna in the woods.

Seeing William's frustration with what we would call today writers block, Agnes suggests to her brother Bartholomew (Joe Alwyn) to send him to London for a theatrical career, leaving her and Susanna (Bodhi Rae Breathnach) in Stratford. Later, a pregnant Agnes tries to go outside to give birth, but William's family restrain her in the house, where she gives birth to twins Hamnet and Judith, the latter at first appearing to be stillborn. Remembering being kept from her mother's deathbed, and despite the midwife (Laura Guest) wanting to take the infant away, Agnes demands to hold the baby, and Judith stirs and wakens.

Eleven years later, William has found success and fortune in London and returns intermittently while the children grow up very close. Agnes foretells that Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe), who wishes to join his father's theatre company, will flourish. Agnes's hawk dies and is buried in the forest, and she tells the children to make a wish to the hawk's spirit, who she says will carry them in its heart. Returning to London, William wanders the streets during an outbreak of bubonic plague. In Stratford, Judith (Olivia Lynes) falls gravely ill with the plague. Hamnet evokes the tale of the hawk to encourage her to get better, and lies beside her, proclaiming he wants to take her place, to trick death. Judith recovers, but Hamnet in turn falls gravely ill and dies a painful death in Agnes' arms. 

William rushes home and is ecstatic that Judith has seemingly made a full recovery, but that turns to despair when he sees Hamnet lying at rest. His continued absence places his marriage to Agnes under pressure as they cope with Hamnet's death in their own ways. William buys the largest house in Stratford and departs for London again. Agnes holds his hand and says she now sees nothing. William rehearses Hamlet in London, but is frustrated by his Actor's flat delivery. In despair, one night while out walking, he leans over the edge of a jetty on the River Thames, contemplating ending his life, and recites his 'To be, or not to be . . . that is the question' monologue from the play. 

Agnes's stepmother Joan (Justine Mitchell) shows her a playbill for a production of 'Tragedie of Hamlet' in London and chastises her for marrying William, but Agnes berates her. Agnes and Bartholomew travel to London to see William. Finding him absent from his modest attic residence, they decide to attend the first performance of Hamlet at the Globe Theatre. 

Making their way to the very front of the stage, when the production begins Agnes is initially offended, thinking her son's name is being taken in vain, however, upon seeing William as the ghost of Hamlet's father, she realises the play is a tribute to Hamnet, and is moved to tears by the scene involving Hamlet and his father. 

Backstage, William, having noticed Agnes, breaks down in tears while listening to the play unfold, and returns to see Agnes from the wings. The play progresses through scenes of sword-fighting, fulfilling Hamnet's dream of such a role. During Hamlet's (Noah Jupe) death scene, Agnes reaches forward for the actor's hand as she had held William's when they first met, and the rest of the audience reaches out toward him also. She sees her son Hamnet on the stage, seen earlier as his dying vision. He moves from sadness to a smile before disappearing into the backstage, through a doorway resembling the forest cave opening under the tree from where Agnes woke in the opening scene. For the first time since Hamnet's death, Agnes laughs and smiles.

Director and co-scribe Chloe Zhao has here delivered us a film for the ages, one that resonates with heartfelt emotion that is underpinned by a powerful screenplay, top notch cinematography, high end production values, and first rate performances by Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal and a young Jacobi Jupe. This is a film that serves as a testament to life and death, and to love and grief, in equal measure that culminates in a real tear jerker of an ending that will remain with you long after the end credits have rolled. See it on the big screen, you won't be disappointed. The film deserves all the accolades bestowed upon it. 

'Hamnet' merits five claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps. 

-Steve, at Odeon Online-