Oscar watch: Hamnet’s technical execution is undeniable, but emotionally flat

Hamnet

• Directed by: Chloé Zhao
• Starring: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal
• Drama/Period | PG-13 | 2 hr 05 min

3.5 stars

By Reed Ripley

At the risk of being accused of a having cold heart, Hamnet simply wasn’t moving. That’s not to say anything sticks out as ill-conceived or mishandled, and in fact, its technical execution is undeniable—there’s just something emotionally missing. One would think that’s impossible in a story about William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and Agnes Hathaway (Jessie Buckley) battling through the tragedy of losing their son to the plague, but ‘aye, there’s the rub.’

Perhaps it’s the Shakespeare of it all. Hamnet is adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 fictionalized novelization of Shakespeare’s life in Stratford-upon-Avon leading up to his creation and production of Hamlet, including the loss of his 11-year-old son, Hamnet, in the plague of 1596. Hamnet’s death is one of the very, very few personal details we have of Shakespeare’s life, and O’Farrell—both in her original novel and in the film, which she co-wrote—seized on that sad, lonely detail to imagine what Shakespeare’s family would have gone through and how that experience potentially inspired perhaps the greatest work of English writing.

That’s certainly interesting enough in theory, but O’Farrell’s novel proves that it’s most interesting from a certain perspective—that of Shakespeare’s wife, Agnes. The novel goes out of its way to minimize the focus on Shakespeare himself, even going so far as to never actually use Shakespeare’s name. The film doesn’t do that, and it’s hard not to view that cynically as a butts-in-seats move (here’s Paul Mescal playing William Shakespeare!). 

Hamnet is definitely Agnes’ show, and Buckley is excellent, but it can’t help itself being drawn back into Shakespeare’s orbit. It’s not that Mescal doesn’t do a great job, or that the Shakespeare-focused scenes aren’t sufficiently engaging, but that decision necessarily draws emphasis away from Agnes’ perspective, while at the same time not entirely leaning into Shakespeare’s, which makes everything feel emotionally flat.

In the end, Hamnet’s death, the singular real-world moment that provided the basis for this story, feels like it only exists to justify the Hamlet scenes in film’s final moments, which feels manipulative, especially considering the 11-year-old’s gruesome on-screen death. Again, it’s not that Hamnet’s objectively bad, and it’s very possible that manipulation isn’t felt across all audiences—it’s there, though, and once felt, it’s tough to shake.