Hamnet is a film of feeling rather than fact, intuition rather than interpretation. It does not argue its case so much as breathe it. For some, this will feel like profound empathy rendered in cinema

Title: Hamnet

Director: Chloé Zhao

Cast: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson, Joe Alwyn

Where: In theatres near you

Rating: 3.5 Stars

Hamnet is less a literary origin story and more an elegy staged in moss, mud, and murmured silences. Directed with monk-like restraint by Chloé Zhao, the film imagines the emotional afterlife of a historical absence: the death of a child whose name echoes uncannily through literary history. Instead of cracking the mystery of how a bereaved father wrote Hamlet, the film lingers on something more fragile and unsettling, the domestic weight of loss and the ways it rearranges love, faith, and memory.

Zhao’s film moves at a walking pace, sometimes a crawl, as if wary of disturbing the earth beneath it. Forests breathe, animals watch, childbirth and illness arrive with elemental indifference. This is a cinema of tactility and intuition rather than argument. The screenplay, co-shaped by Maggie O’Farrell, resists the temptation to explain too much. That restraint is both the film’s strength and its provocation. Viewers expecting clever literary parallels or intellectual scaffolding may find themselves impatient. Those willing to submit to its rhythms may find the film quietly insinuating itself under the skin.

Yet, the film occasionally risks mistaking atmosphere for insight. By keeping language subdued and ideas largely implicit, it flirts with emotional monotony. The wager is that feeling alone will suffice. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it withholds just enough to frustrate.

Actors’ Performance

At the film’s centre is a remarkable performance by Jessie Buckley as Agnes, imagined here as a woman half-rooted in the natural world, half-exiled from her community by grief and intuition. Buckley gives Agnes a tensile stillness; her face becomes the film’s most articulate instrument. In moments of wordless recognition, especially late in the film, she carries the entire emotional thesis without a syllable wasted.

Paul Mescal plays William Shakespeare as a man defined by reticence. This is a bold, if divisive, choice. His Will is not a volcanic genius but a withdrawn observer, more acted upon than acting. Mescal’s quietness has integrity, though it leaves the figure of the playwright curiously undernourished. The children, refreshingly unprecious, bring an unforced naturalism that grounds the film’s pastoral lyricism.

Music and Aesthetics

Visually, the film is hushed and painterly. Cinematography favours patience over flourish, allowing landscapes to absorb emotion rather than mirror it. The score by Max Richter hums and swells with aching precision, never demanding attention yet persistently shaping mood. Together, image and music create a sensorial cocoon, immersive but occasionally too comfortable in its own melancholy.

FPJ Verdict

Hamnet is a film of feeling rather than fact, intuition rather than interpretation. It does not argue its case so much as breathe it. For some, this will feel like profound empathy rendered in cinema. For others, a beautifully wrapped conjecture that shies away from intellectual risk. Either way, it is a serious, tender work that trusts grief to speak for itself, and in doing so, reminds us that art does not always explain loss. Sometimes, it simply sits beside it.