Hamnet (2025), directed by Chloé Zhao and adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s bestselling novel, reimagines the private, intimate world behind William Shakespeare’s most tragic play, Hamlet. The film does not merely follow the famous playwright’s rise; it turns its gaze toward the emotional epicenter of his home: the love, loss, and grief that shaped his life, particularly the death of his 11-year-old son, Hamnet.
What unfolds on screen is a deeply emotional, sometimes overwhelming portrayal of marriage, motherhood, ambition, and the devastating weight of tragedy.
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Agnes and Will — A Love Born in the Woods
The story begins in rural Warwickshire, where Agnes—played with fierce intensity by Jessie Buckley—is introduced not as a conventional woman of her time, but as a mysterious figure deeply connected to nature. Rumored to be the daughter of a forest witch, she roams the woods with her pet hawk, gathering herbs and preparing potions. From her first appearance, she is framed as powerful, intuitive, and spiritually attuned, a woman more at home among the trees than among people.
Will Shakespeare (Paul Mescal), meanwhile, is a young Latin tutor—earnest, restless, and creatively simmering. He dreams of crafting stories and escaping the shadow of his violent, overbearing father. He scribbles the first lines of Romeo and Juliet in his attic, hinting that he is destined for greatness, though still unpolished and unsure.
Their meeting is a cinematic contrast of personalities: Will, civilized but timid, drawn to Agnes’s wild freedom; Agnes, confident yet spiritually burdened, intrigued by Will’s gentleness. The film paints their romance with soft, luminous scenes—glances exchanged through sunlight, whispered conversations in the woods, and a bond that grows quickly and deeply.
Their marriage, shown through montages of laughter, shared farm work, and tender moments with their first child Susanna, feels idyllic—almost too perfect. The setting—Stratford-upon-Avon—is shown as empty, quiet, and picturesque, a fairytale backdrop for the young family. Soon Agnes gives birth to twins, Hamnet and Judith, who become the heart of their story.
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Family Life and Fractured Ambitions
As the twins grow, we see Hamnet as a sensitive, curious child and Judith as his lively mirror. The film emphasizes their closeness, suggesting they share an unspoken bond. But the harmony of family life starts to drift when Will begins spending more time away, traveling to London to pursue his writing career.
This distance creates subtle cracks in the marriage. Agnes, though strong, begins to feel the loneliness of raising three children nearly alone. Will, on the other hand, is torn between his responsibility as a father and his hunger to become a great playwright.
We sense his guilt, his frustration, and his yearning—often shown through scenes of writer’s block, late-night outbursts, and emotional turmoil. These moments foreshadow the emotional storms ahead.
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The Plague Arrives — And Everything Changes
The central tragedy begins quietly. Judith falls ill first. Feverish, weak, and trembling, she is tended to by Agnes with herbs and whispered prayers. The scenes are shot with suffocating closeness—sweat, tears, trembling hands—and a terrifying sense of helplessness.
But in a heartbreaking twist, it is Hamnet who deteriorates more rapidly.
The boy’s cries of pain and Agnes’s desperate attempts to heal him create some of the film’s most emotionally brutal moments. Her grief is raw, visceral, and animalistic, the kind that tears through the screen. The plague takes hold, tightening its grip, and despite Agnes’s frantic efforts, Hamnet dies.
Everything stops. The house falls silent. The world seems to freeze.
Jessie Buckley’s performance in this sequence is the centerpiece of the film—agonizing, shattering, unforgettable.
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Will’s Grief — And the Birth of Hamlet
When Will returns from London and learns of his son’s death, he is swallowed by grief and guilt. He feels responsible for not being present; he feels helpless, angry, and fractured. He throws himself into writing with a kind of feverish desperation.
This is where the film begins to blur the line between life and art.
We watch him draft early versions of Hamlet, and the connections to Hamnet become painfully clear:
A father and son broken by death
Grief consuming the mind
The fragile balance between madness and sanity
The ghost of a loved one haunting every moment
Will pours his sorrow, his regret, and his love into the play. Writing becomes his only refuge—the only way he can speak to his son again.
But while the film tries to tie Hamnet’s death directly to Hamlet, it sometimes stretches the symbolism too deliberately. Sword fights, for example, are shown as memories of games Hamnet and Will played. Forest backdrops remind Will of the place he met Agnes. These echoes are crafted to induce emotion, even when they don’t fully align with historical or theatrical logic.
Still, the emotional impact remains powerful.
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The Globe Theatre — Agnes Confronts the Play
The emotional climax comes when Agnes, still hollowed by loss, travels to London to watch the first-ever performance of Hamlet at the Globe. It is her first time witnessing Will’s world, the world he chose when he left home.
As the actors speak the famous lines—“To be or not to be”—Agnes begins to see fragments of her son in the play. She listens to the prince mourning his dead father. She watches the grief, the madness, the existential dread, and she wonders: Is this about my son? Or is it about Will himself?
Will, performing onstage, breaks down mid-speech, tears streaming down his face. The theatre falls silent. Audience members watch in stunned awe as Will’s real grief merges with the play’s fictional emotion.
Agnes whispers, “What has any of this to do with my son?”
It is the film’s most haunting question.
She sees Will’s grief, but she also sees his appropriation of their shared tragedy. She understands him, yet she feels distanced from him more than ever—both connected and separated by the chasm of loss.
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The Final Emotional Wave
The final scenes circle between memory and present. Agnes returns to the empty rooms of her home, imagining Hamnet’s footsteps, his laughter, the way he once clung to her side. Will tries to comfort her, but grief has carved them into different shapes.
The film ends without an easy resolution because grief itself offers none. Agnes’s final expression carries sorrow, strength, and unanswered questions—an acknowledgment that even in art, some losses remain untransformed.
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Conclusion
Hamnet (2025) is a visually poetic, emotionally overwhelming retelling of a family shattered by plague and a marriage stretched between love, ambition, and grief. While it sometimes leans into emotional manipulation, the raw intensity of the performances and the central tragedy give the story undeniable power.
It is a tale of:
a mother who loses a child
a father who loses a part of himself
and a legacy born from heartbreak.
The film leaves you with a lingering ache—a reminder that behind even the greatest works of art lie ordinary human lives marked by extraordinary pain.
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