“Hamnet” is a lovely movie. The PG-13 film was released nationwide in December and is still showing in local theaters. It has several nominations for the upcoming 2026 Academy Awards. Jessie Buckley (“The Lost Daughter”) stars as Agnes Shakespeare alongside Paul Mescal (“Normal People”) as William Shakespeare. These two Irish actors deliver standout performances in this historical drama, particularly Buckley. Her raw, guttural acting style brings emotional depth to the film’s powerful themes of love and loss, making this period piece especially moving. Young Hamnet, child of Agnes and William, is played superbly by British actor Jacobi Jupe.
The film is set in 16th-century England and tells the tale of Agnes Shakespeare (often referred to as Anne Hathaway in historical documents) and her marriage to William Shakespeare. They had three children and tragically lost their son Hamnet at age 11 in 1596, the story of which is presumed to have formed the basis for one of Shakespeare’s best-known plays (“Hamlet”). Details of William Shakespeare’s personal life remain largely undocumented, therefore this film utilizes basic known facts and artistic license to fill in the rest of the emotionally atmospheric plot. An opening caption informs viewers that the names Hamnet and Hamlet are considered interchangeable. Hamnet’s death has a deep impact on the scaffolding of the Shakespeare family at a vulnerable time. It leads to distance and blame between Agnes and William as they navigate the increasingly public nature of his career and the depth of grief suffered by Agnes. She is portrayed as powerful and intuitive, yet also isolated in motherhood.
The scenery surrounding the Shakespeare family home in Stratford-upon-Avon is lush and pastoral, while the period set pieces evoke an authentic sense of the time. The film’s pace feels like a gentle unfolding of multiple emotions, although the emotions themselves are intense. The interplay between the Shakespeare siblings is touching. Hamnet and his twin sister, Judith, are preternaturally close, which make his sudden passing all the more brutal. The dynamics of the grieving Shakespeare parents (Agnes and William) is complex, with overlays of guilt and blame. Filmmaker Cloe Zhao, known for directing the Academy Award winning 2020 film “Nomadland”, uses her trademark long shots in filming and involvement with nature and landscapes to great effect. Zhao worked with screenwriter Maggie O’Farrell, whose novel “Hamnet” serves as the basis for this film.
The ultimate throughline of the movie, explored more near the end, is how the tragic passing of William Shakespeare’s son led Shakespeare to create the play “Hamlet”. Shakespeare’s long periods of being in London to work on the play created emotional distance between Agnes and William as they adapted to life without their son Hamnet. A staging of the play is shown in this story, with the suggestion that art can have a cathartic effect on the suffering of loss. A very effective casting touch is the use of Noah Jupe (the real-life older brother of the actor who portrays young Hamnet) to play Hamlet in the staging of the play. The resemblance is uncanny when seeing the young Hamnet before his death and the imagined somewhat older version of him rendered in the play by his actual sibling. The play-within-the-film scenes deliver dramatic and explosive moments late in the film. I don’t typically tend toward the historical drama genre as a preference, yet this film pulled me in and didn’t let go. Hamnet is a story of tragedy, creativity in the arts, and of the beauty of human resilience. I give this movie an A. If you haven’t yet seen it, you may wish to do so while it is still in theaters.
