"Hamnet" Movie Review

After seeing Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet I had no intention of writing a review.  So, I didn’t. But now, having seen it for a second time about a month later, I find myself inspired after walking out with a fresher perspective.

Initially I didn’t think all that much of it.  Having found myself smitten with and greatly impressed by Jesse Buckley after seeing her in Wicked Little Letters, I was anxious to see her in this film.  I thought Hamnet was good but not great.  I thought her performance was a little Oscar-baity.  I fail to see the allure that is Paul Mescal so he didn’t really impress me.  I see now that I was jaded having come into the movie with low expectations and begrudgingly being open to a 16th-century historical tale of love and grief.  I was wrong.

Show me a movie about William Shakespeare that isn’t about William Shakespeare. Hamnet!

This film tells the story of The Bard’s love story after meeting Agnes and them starting a family. In the backdrop we see Shakespeare off to London to write and produce Hamlet while back at home his family undergoes a terrible sickness that leaves the family devastated and one person shorter in the end.  The tragedy tears right into the fabric of the love that William and Agnes share.  We see how this heartbreaking chapter fuels Shakespeare to write one of his most epic works as we watch Agnes unwind and come to terms with her new life and new family life.

It’s a sad story but not over the top.  It’s fine acting by every character, including the kids, and worth of every award nomination and eventual win it garners.  It’s a great film that quietly creeps up on you and leaves you with a new appreciation for the human side of a historical figure that many of us don’t know much about and probably never considered just how basically human he was.

- Paul Rosen