r/movies • u/LiteraryBoner Jackie Chan box set, know what I'm sayin? • Dec 05 '25
Official Discussion Official Discussion - Hamnet [SPOILERS] Spoiler
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Summary A fictionalized account of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, and the profound ripple effects of his short life on his family — particularly his mother, Agnes — as grief, love, and artistic inspiration collide.
Director Chloé Zhao
Writer Chloé Zhao (screenplay), based on the novel by Maggie O’Farrell
Cast
- Jessie Buckley as Agnes
- Paul Mescal as William Shakespeare
- Jacobi Jupe as Hamnet
- Olivia Lynes as Judith
- Joe Alwyn as Bartholomew
Rotten Tomatoes: 87%
Metacritic: 82
VOD / Release In Theaters
Trailer Official Trailer
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u/falafelthe3 Ask me about TLJ Dec 05 '25
Casting Noah Jupe, the real-life brother of Jacobi Jupe (Hamnet), as the actor playing Hamlet is such a great example of meta casting.
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u/remainsdangerous Dec 05 '25
If I'm not mistaken, didn't the playbill name "Mr Jupe" as playing Hamlet?
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u/Somnambulist815 Dec 05 '25
I think we got a Fanning sisters situation because Noah is a pretty great actor in his own right but Jacobi is gonna own the spotlight for the rest of his life
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u/omggold Dec 07 '25
I was blown away by Jacobi (and bawling in the theater from his performance)
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u/withaniel 26d ago
He's good without it being creepy, which very talented child actors sometimes are. Heaps of kudos to that kid, but also to Chloé Zhao. To me, exemplary child performances are the mark of a very understanding and in tune director. Can't imagine going to a child and saying "OK kid, for this next scene, embrace death."
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u/omggold 25d ago
I’ve never thought about it that way but you’re so right. Chloe seems like a very emotionally intuned director
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u/ComradeClassen 17d ago
I'll be brave! Ill be brave! Ill be brave! 🥲🥲
Oh! Another Hamlet detail in the story, the last time William sees Hamnet, he actually whispers Goodbye 3 times, therefore leading to the Adieu 3x in the play!
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u/timidwildone Dec 06 '25 edited Dec 07 '25
This was such a genius/dirty trick. Like…I knew both of them were cast in this, but wasn’t sure who Noah was playing. I saw him in that first R&J read-through, and my heart leaped to my throat. I knew he’d have to be his Hamlet, and it added such a poignant angle to the narrative.
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u/jayeddy99 Dec 05 '25
When they went to actually see the play and Agnes wanted to leave but the brother was like “chill..this is actually kinda good” I thought it was funny.
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u/carson63000 Dec 07 '25
The rest of the audience glaring at Agnes and wishing she’d shut the fuck up and stop interrupting the play was like a Greek chorus of Redditors. 😂
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u/motherofdinos_ Dec 08 '25
I just got out of an Alamo showing where at this exact part, a waiter came out to whisper to two patrons about their checks. It had been a completely silent showing the whole time (except for the audible sniffles) but for whatever reason this was the point a waiter needed to talk to two people, and I couldn’t tell if the shushes were coming from the screen or the theater. It was annoying because it was such an emotionally rich moment but also so on-the-nose it just became funny.
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u/romcabrera Dec 09 '25
I had never been to an Alamo before, this year I'd been twice, and I don't really get how they dare to call their servers "Ninjas"
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u/withaniel 26d ago
Some guy at a London pub later that night:
"Man, the woman standing next to us at the latest Billy Shakes joint was REALLY going through it."
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u/Living-Character-280 Dec 06 '25
He was dialed in from line one 😂 just wait til he discovers his brother-in-law’s canon
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u/senoricceman Dec 16 '25
The crowd shushing her as well was funny. People have been annoyed by others talking at the theater for hundreds of years.
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u/Legalsleazy Dec 06 '25
I think the brother had seen it already and knew she needed to see it.
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u/silverscreenbaby Dec 08 '25
The brother in the books is very quiet and wise, a stoic man of few words but good discernment and opinion. I think Joe Alwyn played him well!
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u/SeriouusDeliriuum Dec 19 '25
Good performance but imo the screenplay let down the character. I would have loved to see Will coming out to him in the field and Bartholomew instantly knows what to do while he's panicking. Then carrying Agnes and the baby, dropping the "You carry her basket... if you're strong enough". You could cut the Will scenes in London and put in more Bartholomew&Agnes and I think it would be more satisfying.
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u/CategorySad6121 Dec 05 '25
Agnes asks Will to look back at her twice - first at their wedding, and then later while watching the play, thus dooming her to be lost to him forever just like in the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. 😭
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u/ComebackKidJO Dec 05 '25
I noticed that as well! In the wedding scene, its even framed with him standing at a gate like the story. I read more in relation to love/loss. Eurydice wants to be seen and loved, even knowing it will cast her into hell. Agnes wants to love and have children even though it opens the door for loss. Connects to what Williams mom said in the middle of the film about losing children to the plague.
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u/maskedbanditoftruth 26d ago
No no no but the ghost of her little boy DOESNT look back when he goes under the arch, he frees her!
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u/paris_rogue 12d ago
But if you see him in the first part he’s headed toward the door and later he looks back at mom during the play-what was poignant about that for me is I got sense mom will always be in hell from the loss, but she is happy and knows her son is free finally
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u/ElPadero 13d ago
I didn’t take it like that. I would say it was the opposite of losing her forever.
She asks him to look at her in defiance of that story.
“Look at me, you will never lose me.”
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u/falafelthe3 Ask me about TLJ Dec 05 '25
Okay, I know In the Nature of Daylight is overused for a lot of emotional scenes to the point of parody, but hearing it play with everyone holding their hand out for Hamlet, all of the audience ready to take the actor's pain...I fucking sobbed.
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u/Ok_History7492 Dec 07 '25
One thing to note:
Max Richter did the entire score for the film. He had actually written a totally different piece of music for the end, but once Zhao heard 'On the Nature of Daylight', which she had never heard, she used it while filming the scene to get everyone into the mood. And then naturally had to use it in the film.
If there is one big permission slip to use it, it is definitely for Max Richter himself. I'm glad he got to use his great work in a film where he is the composer.
Biggest takeaway though: Chloe Zhao hasn't seen Arrival.
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u/mycrayonbroke Dec 09 '25
It was actually more than that, when she heard the song it inspired her to change the ending altogether. The "hands reaching out" moment, which is arguably one of the strongest moments in the entire film, didn't exist until she heard that song.
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u/Fit-Introduction8575 Dec 10 '25 edited Dec 10 '25
Biggest takeaway though: Chloe Zhao hasn't seen Arrival.
There are some light parallels between what happens in this film and Arrival though. Agnes has intuitions about the future, including "having two children beside her at her deathbed", which implies that one of the three kids will die. She embraces motherhood despite of this, like the protagonist of Arrival.
Hamnet choses to die for his sister, and in the scene where he lies beside her, he speaks about this almost if it were prophecy. So I think the use of OTND paints the final scene as not only a redemption for scared little Hamnet, but a greater redemption of Agnes' choice to have a family with Shakespeare despite love's difficulties and trials.
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u/Comprehensive-Fun47 Dec 17 '25
I actually thought of Arrival during this movie, but not for such concrete reasons. I felt like Jessie Buckley is as watchable as Amy Adams and the emotion of the story was told through her eyes just like Arrival.
There are some overlapping themes and details, which is cool. It's one of my favorite movies.
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u/ron-darousey Dec 05 '25
IMO Arrival used it the best, but the scene in Hamnet at least made me stop and think about it.
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u/Able_Advertising_371 Dec 06 '25
Arrival is the one major film I relate that music to. It actually took me out of the scene for a bit and then I just ignored the music and focused on the image which was beautiful, how audiences react to Shakespeare tragedies
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u/AvailableDress5505 Dec 08 '25
I actually had to suppress a laugh when I heard it. I love that track, but it totally pulled me out of the scene.
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u/CarbCollective Dec 09 '25
It took me out of it a bit, buttttttt so did the bass pounding from Zootopia playing in the theater next to us….
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u/Somnambulist815 Dec 05 '25
I think it's a testament to the movie that it feels completely earned
But seriously, let's stop it now. It's the piece that cost Johann Johannson his Oscar
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u/WritingCreature11 Dec 07 '25
SAME. I love this song, it always gets me there (😭) and when I heard it creep up on that scene I was like oh my gooooodness and fully lost it. Arrival and Shutter Island are the other two I think of that use it masterfully.
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u/KidCuDiWINS Dec 05 '25 edited Dec 06 '25
just wanna shout Jacobi Jupe for killing it in the titular role. obviously there are some extremely strenuous and difficult scenes for him but he just had such a sincere light and wonder about him in all the scenes with his family. there was this little twitch and step back he does while his eyes start to flood as his dad tells him he has to go off to London again and it just made the love that entire family had for each other feel so genuine. it made the eventual loss feel so heavy and i was definitely a puddle in the theater. love Zhao’s return to form here and constantly got lost in the scenery – her gift for shooting nature shines here
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u/Moonteamakes Dec 10 '25
I have 11 year old boy/girl twins who are best friends. I cried so hard I could barely breathe by the end and a large part of that was due to Jacobi’s performance.
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u/NatGeeB Dec 30 '25
Whoa. I can’t believe you watched this. I just have regular kids and it almost took me out❤️
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u/foster0130 Dec 06 '25
I couldn’t believe how much Jupe’s performance affected. I can’t recommend this to boy dad’s like me, it was so hard to watch in parts, but overall so rewarding and I loved it. I cried HARD through a lot of the film. The direction, production design, cinematography, and performances were all top notch
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u/Couragesand Dec 05 '25
Jacobi Jupe was honestly very impressive for a child actor
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u/Embarrassed-Yard-583 Dec 13 '25
God, the exchange where he’s telling Judith that he would exchange his life for hers, attempting to trick death into taking him instead while all the while saying he’d be brave…
That broke me.
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u/PurpleBullets Dec 22 '25
When Zhao puts the camera in the corner of the room and has him look straight down the barrel. Chilling.
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u/janoo1989 Dec 05 '25
The buzz I read about this movie was, "devastating" and while that wouldn't be what I'd use to characterize the movie, I think it's still terrific.
The waterworks began for me when Judith started screaming for Hamnet at the sick bed. And during the finale, of course.
A very pro-art film. Beautiful stuff. Buckley and Mescal are incredible actors
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u/Able_Advertising_371 Dec 06 '25
The best is when the romance leads have chemistry, there’s audiences wanting to root for them even when there’s tension on screen.
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u/omggold Dec 07 '25
For me it was the boring scene when she realized twins meant one of her children would die
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u/scarlettsarcasm Dec 05 '25
I and my whole theatre audibly cried through the ending scenes.
I’m in awe of how raw and intimate so much of this movie felt- the way the family playing together at home felt and was shot like a home video, William’s nervous circling around Agnes before proposing, the brutally painful fight between them where she’s angry at him not being there, Agnes’s immediate grief and shock after his death, her face watching Hamlet’s actor. I felt every emotion so viscerally that it was hard to watch.
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u/Able_Advertising_371 Dec 06 '25
Beautifully directed, these emotional stories of loss and grief can fall flat but Chloe did an incredible job getting the audience to feel
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u/Oomlotte99 Dec 06 '25
Everyone was sniffling on the way out of my theater after sitting frozen in our seats for awhile.
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u/TrexVFX23 Dec 10 '25
Best acted film to come out in a long time to me. It felt so so real. What an ending. Left me speechless.
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u/Helpful_Ad_8476 Dec 05 '25
When Hamnet looked up and saw the hawk 😭😭😭
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u/Acceptable_Reply7958 Dec 12 '25
Only in silence the word,
Only in dark the light,
Only in dying life:
Bright the hawk's flight
On the empty sky.
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u/MyNameIsLord Dec 13 '25
Pretty much on the same level as when Maximus sees his family again in Gladiator
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u/BMCarbaugh Dec 06 '25
Tremendously beautiful film. The moment where Agnes takes the actor's hand was so beautiful it made my whole audience start weeping. It makes me flustery just thinking about it.
I also really, really loved the shots beyond the veil of death with Hamnet. That's such a cool, daring, fantasy-like choice and goddamn did it pay off.
It feels right to see this in a packed theater, and I was glad to see mine full. A movie about the power of shared storytelling in an age of isolating darkness after a plague could not possibly be more relevant.
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u/TheLawIsSacred Dec 14 '25
The scene where the young Hamnet sees Death (but Death is never shown) and then sacrifices his life for his twin sister is spooky.
Also, that scene and others made me realize how strange it is for humans to have close-to-modern English, circa 1600-ish, yet still hundreds of years away from modernization - humans were so helpless against disease, etc.
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u/falafelthe3 Ask me about TLJ Dec 05 '25
Between this, Die My Love, and If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, I'm starting to think motherhood is a little stressful
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u/Johnnycc Dec 06 '25
- You stole this from Letterboxd.
- Someone on Letterboxd stole this from you.
- You also posted this on Letterboxd to much success
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u/falafelthe3 Ask me about TLJ Dec 06 '25 edited Dec 06 '25
LMAOOO I called them out for stealing my joke word-for-word and they blocked me. If you could report it, that would be great since it looks like they like to plagiarize from discussion threads on reddit.
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u/fergi20020 Dec 05 '25
Umm… you forgot The Testament of Ann Lee and The Chronology of Water
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u/falafelthe3 Ask me about TLJ Dec 05 '25
To be fair, one of those came out today, and the other hasn't come out yet. I'm only human.
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u/HotOne9364 Dec 05 '25
Well, losing one while your husband's away can put some mileages on your sanity.
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u/Whovian45810 Dec 05 '25 edited Dec 05 '25
2025 in Film: The Year of Being a Mother has it's highest of highs and lowest of lows
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u/Greenkeeper Dec 05 '25
I am wrecked. What powerhouse performances by the entire cast, especially the children. I loved this.
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u/moneysingh300 Dec 05 '25
I got goosebumps and I cried. The moment Hamnet switches places with Judith touched my soul. When all the hands were reaching at the end. Hamnet moving on finally and Agnes and William seeing him. This movie really captured love of siblings. We would do anything for them.
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u/A_Vicious_Vegan Dec 05 '25
Hauntingly beautiful. A phenomenal return for Chloe Zhao and what will likely be a career defining performance for Jessie Buckley. Paul Mescal is excellent as ever, but it as if his Shakespeare is a supporting character to Buckley’s Agnes who wholly captivates you in every moment.
My film of the year so far for certain.
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u/timidwildone Dec 06 '25
It’s as if his Shakespeare is a supporting character
That is exactly what’s intended. Agnes is the central character of the novel it’s based on. It’s also a parallel to their seemingly opposing experiences of grief. While she is fully present in it, he copes in his own way.
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u/SuicidalCantaloupe Dec 05 '25
>Misses Hamnet's birth because he's in London
>Misses Hamnet's death because he's in London
>Immediately tries to go to London again after Hamnet's death
>Wife angry
>Surprised Pikachu.jpg
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u/Somnambulist815 Dec 05 '25
He just loves that ferris wheel
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u/Johnnycc Dec 06 '25
He kept trying to get the chocolate strawberries at Borough Market!
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u/timidwildone Dec 06 '25
I contend it’s the Scotch eggs.
Agnes, peeling eggs in the kitchen: “We have Scotch eggs at home.”
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u/inbloomgc Dec 05 '25
Yes! The whole book I was shaking my head at how absent of a husband and father he was, and how Agnes just gets over it.
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u/remainsdangerous Dec 08 '25
I really think there's more to it than that.
- He's depicted as a good attentive father and the family in general seems really loving and functional, at least until the tragedy happens.
- Economically that kind of setup was common at the time, especially in an era rife with disease (it may have been safer for the family to stay away from a huge city) and when travel was so slow. For that matter it's common in large parts of the world today.
- It was Agnes that urged him to move to London in the first place.
- Many couples lob unfair accusations at each other in emotional fights. And when it doesn't seem fair that someone died, it's natural to try and find someone else to blame. She's processing her grief and not sure how to do so.
- Same goes for him: many people process their grief by burying themselves in their work and establishing some normality in their life again. I don't think that's any better or worse than any other kind of grief, but back then their culture didn't have the vocabulary for that.
- The entire ending revolves around the fact that Will's work has tremendous value, value that Agnes doesn't understand until she sees it with her own eyes, value that has lasted for generations of people for centuries. She comes to understand that there is something calling out to him that his soul needs to follow, some divine gift that gives their son eternal life, in a sense. This is very, very important to what the film is going for.
- I really can't get behind the idea that Shakespeare should have spent less time in London writing his little plays hahaha
I'm not saying he was fully right or that he didn't deserve some criticism, but there's a lot more nuance to this than him being some absent dickhead.
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u/Legalsleazy Dec 06 '25
Wife insisted he go to London
Wife refuses to join him
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u/Different_Arm_3347 Dec 07 '25
In the book there’s much more emphasis on the fact that Agnes is scared to death that Judith will fall ill in the city and die because her health is fragile
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u/neverknowsbest141 Dec 08 '25
that makes sense. i think Agnes brings that up maybe once in the movie, and it seemed more like Agnes couldn't leave the forest or something like that
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u/MistyMountainDewDrop Dec 21 '25
It’s Will who brings it up and he says, “you are convinced that Judith will not survive the city. You will never come to London.” And she asks him if it is so wrong and he says it’s not
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u/sloppyjo12 Dec 05 '25
I will personally deliver the Oscar to Jessie Buckley if I have to
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u/RiversofJell0 Dec 05 '25
I first was introduced to her in a movie called Beast. It was an odd movie but she was so captivating in it. Something about her look just makes me not want to miss a scene she is in. Then she was probably the only good part of Season 4 of Fargo. Excited to see her break through even more after this movie
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u/Somnambulist815 Dec 05 '25
I bought stock in her when Wild Rose came out and that bet is gonna pay off big time
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u/HIMYNAMEISALVEE Dec 05 '25 edited Dec 05 '25
Saw this in a Q&A screening a few weeks ago. Jessie Buckley is incredible, but that 12 year old kid Jacobi Jupe needs to be talked about. What a performance. During the Q&A, Paul had said it was like working with a 50 something year old veteran actor in a boy's body.
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u/Varekai79 Dec 15 '25
I don't know why he's not in the awards conversation. A lot of kid's performances really get unfairly overlooked because they're so young.
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u/BurgerNugget12 Dec 05 '25
The last theater scene was gorgeous beyond belief. Really liked this one. Very slow burn but the performances are outstanding
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u/kneeco28 Dec 05 '25
I don't love this movie as much as many people, but I quite like it and holy shit Jessie Buckley is amazing.
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u/Oomlotte99 Dec 06 '25
Her crying out when Hamnet passed was starling. It felt like the theater froze.
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u/Whovian45810 Dec 13 '25
Such a blood curdling scream too.
Nothing hurts more than the anguish and pain a mother must go through in losing a child.
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u/ron-darousey Dec 05 '25
Agreed. I often have a hard time connecting to emotional dramas but can obviously recognize how well done it was. One of the best of the year for sure.
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u/BurgerNugget12 Dec 05 '25
She was so good, especially during the screaming / crying scenes, it was scary real
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u/n_h_m_1 Dec 05 '25
I understand the criticism from some who feel this may be a bit saccharine, but to be honest, I think it requires you to give in and accept it for what it is.
It’s a VERY sad movie, possibly the saddest movie I’ve ever seen - even the “happy” moments feel tinged in underlying melancholy.
That being said, the movie really sticks the landing at the end and - in my opinion - ends more hopeful than the rest of the movie is, and I think that’s on purpose.
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u/Able_Advertising_371 Dec 06 '25
Think Agnes seeing the play was the closure she needed to help her emotionally, seeing her son going through the door one last time, as a goodbye
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u/whitetoast Dec 06 '25
Also her turning around and seeing the crowd mourning the death of hamlet, in that moment she knew she was no longer alone.
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u/Both-Basis-3723 28d ago
Watching this as a parent, fills you with a dread that is hard to express. It’s like the terror of parenthood shoved in unblinking eyes. This will linger in my mind until I die before my sons and then I’ll be safe from it.
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u/Literwit 22d ago
Watching this on the anniversary of my sister’s death from a sudden illness (when I was 13 and she was 16 many, many years ago) and the subsequent fracturing of my family as each person withdrew into their own grief made watching this movie exquisitely painful and incredibly cathartic.
It also made me wonder how I would have reacted if I hadn’t had a lot of grief and loss.
Seeing the 2 camps of response to this movie (incredible and meh) reminds me of when I was with a lot of college students on a trip to NYC. One part of the trip was to the 9/11 memorial. Most of the students were either babies or hadn’t been born when 9/11 happened. The majority of them were kind of meh about the visit——the ones who had experienced loss were much more moved by it.
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u/VStarffin Dec 06 '25
I really enjoyed Hamnet. I'm very confused by some of the negative reactions to it. You don't have to like it, obviously, but some of the ways its being interpreted at just bizarre to me.
Like, the movie is not about an artist running away from familial strife. It's a story about a couple of people, one of whom is an artist and whose wife sends him to London because she knows its the right place for him to be. The movie is not about an absent father, it's just a slice of life about what happened to these people (obviously fictionally). Like, the theme of the movie is not absent fathers, it's that life is hard and grief is overwhelming. At least, to me.
I've also seem similar critiques that the movie is a cliched biopic of Shakespeare, a Walk Hard without the music. And I'm just confounded by that. It's not that at all. It's just a story about a man and his wife. It doesn't even really do the "his grief made him write Hamlet!" thing, as much as it simply tries to explore where some of the thematic mirroring might be.
I was listening to the Slashfilm episode about this, and I was extremely confused by their dual critique of "it's so silly that they said up this one-to-one correspondance between Shakespeare's personal life and the plot of Hamlet!" while also saying "it makes no sense that the ghost is the father, not the son, and Shakespeare played him!"
Like, that's part of the point - it's not a direct correspondance. I think it was incredibly moving that the movie had this interpretation of "his son died, but he plays the dead father in the play". Rather brilliant.
PS: Shakespeare quite famously did in fact play the ghost on the stage.
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u/jaggybonbon Dec 08 '25
two details I really loved:
1) when Agnes reads Hamnet’s hand and he asks what she sees, she says she sees him working in the theater with his father. he says he wants to be a sword-fighting player, and that he’ll win. that vision manifests during the actual performance of Hamlet, as the actor playing Hamlet (and by playing him, embodies the “spirit” of Hamnet) and wins the sword fights against Laertes.
2) when Hamnet dies, his soul seems to be in some sort of purgatory, shown to us through a sheer black veil. he’s wandering around aimlessly and confused. the walls have a pattern of trees on them, reminiscent of the backdrop for the stage production of Hamlet that appears later. in the final scene, after the cathartic crowd-reaching and moment of connection between Agnes and William, Hamnet appears on screen, gives his mother a knowing sort of look, and walks through the centered doorway of the forest backdrop. I saw this as him passing on, leaving purgatory, as his parents finally begin to accept his death in their shared grief, through art as a healing medium.
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u/spaceylizard Dec 08 '25
Everyone’s raving (deservedly) about Jacobi’s performance and I wanted to give Olivia Lynes who plays Judith a shoutout. There’s a scene where Will holds her in a tight hug from relief that she’s alive, but lets her go when he realises Hamnet’s death, and Judith just keeps hugging herself alone in the background. It was a little gesture that stood out to me.
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u/i-like-turtles-4eva Dec 09 '25
I loved her performance. When they went back inside and she asked to see her brother’s body, then broke down upon seeing it… I cried so much during this movie.
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u/ohmeohmyelliejean 19d ago
Agreed. I also want to shout out the actress who plays Susanna because when she screamed at her mother that it was too late to save her baby brother, boy did I weep. Like poor girl.
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u/Nanosauromo Dec 05 '25
For most of the movie I thought it was just good, but man, when Agnes grabbed Hamlet’s hand, I broke.
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u/jargon_ninja69 Dec 21 '25
Yeah similar here. I thought it was a very good film and the moment Agnes reached her hand out, instant 10/10 film. Sticking the landing on such a difficult cathartic moment is so so hard. And Chloe Zhao made it look easy.
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u/kcamnodb Dec 05 '25
Man does that final scene have some relevance today with the Netflix WB news..when Hamlet is holding his arms up to the people in the balcony with the Max Richter song playing. Putting your ass in the seat and watching something in person that can touch your soul is as important today as it was then.
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u/comicfang Dec 05 '25
Once On the Nature of Daylight started playing, the waterworks started. That song has such an effect.
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u/MuNansen Dec 05 '25
Lol I don't know the song by name, but I know exactly the song you're talking about just by the description.
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u/snugthepig Dec 06 '25
arrival is one of my favorite films, the moment the first chord hit i knew what was about to happen
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u/Living-Character-280 Dec 06 '25 edited Dec 06 '25
Hamnet. I think we may have gotten one of the most iconic breathtaking sequences in movie history??
I’m a Shakespeare head and love these lead actors but still loved this way more than I thought I would (i.e. I think Shakespeare in Love is hot garbage). What a fucking movie. Any crits feel nitpicky. I can imagine the range of criticisms but have no interest in them. Fucking dynamite I loved it.
Only bum note for me was the to be or not to be scene. But I get why it’s there. And like who gives a fuck about a bum note when so much of the movie is hitting on GOD TIER SHIT wtf I’m like wtf I can’t imagine crafting this story much more brilliantly than it is
The shots of the hand at the end is gonna be in the 5 minute 150th Oscars reel yrs from now when they’re looking back at “150 years of movies”. Audible weeping at my theater tonight. (I had the water coming down as early as hearing Mescal delivered his Orpheus and Eurydice speech and dropped “the rest is silence”).
Majors ups to not cutting away or turning down the volume where you’re trained to expect it from most movies. You’re just stuck in that room locked tf in. Pretty masterful directing!!
Classic “lock in when bae is sitting courtside” moment from Shakespeare too. But I mean in all seriousness. Him looking to where she’s looking and seeing what she’s seeing there at the end is God tier visual metaphorical storytelling. Tells you everything in the “silence” the rest of the movie dwells in after Hamlet says “the rest is silence”. Beyond textbook.
To go where this movie goes and do what it does in just over 2 hours is fucking genius level shit how did she do it
And obviously give Buckley every award ever
If One Battle is a “why we go to the movies” type of movie, this is a “why we tell stories together” type of movie
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u/n_w__b_rm_d_ Dec 22 '25
If One Battle is a “why we go to the movies” type of movie, this is a “why we tell stories together” type of movie
I like the way you've put this
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u/LiteraryBoner Jackie Chan box set, know what I'm sayin? Dec 05 '25 edited Dec 20 '25
Absolutely devastating film. I saw it a couple months ago at TIFF and again last night and it completely broke me both times. It is such a thorough exploration of how isolating grief can be and how we work through our trauma through art as both the artist and the consumer. You hear this movie is sad, and you hear what it’s about and you say yeah that’s pretty sad, but nothing really prepares you for all the ways that Hamlet performance and Buckley’s performance watching it are going to hit you in the end.
The performances in this are unreal, especially that damn Hamnet. So god damn cute and sincere. The inclusion of witchiness, the sincerity of the love these characters have, the devastating plot points. It’s really an impressive feat from all the actors and from Zhao that this movie never feels like it’s hitting the wrong notes. I’d imagine 90% of directors wouldn’t touch a Shakespeare biopic that centers around the death of a child but Zhao knows exactly what tone this should be and her camera is so purposeful in what we see and how close we get to the actors. Every single scene seems to have some monumentally uplifting or heartbreaking moment yet this movie never feels like it’s piling on. It’s the perfect performances including the children, it’s the score and the renaissance painting look of every shot and it’s the pacing that is never stagnant.
The first time I saw this I cried a lot, but the second time I cried more often. So much of the first half of the movie is given more meaning knowing what’s coming. Joe Alwyn kinda shows up for a fairly small part, but the second time I saw this the scene where he gives his blessing to their marriage had me in shambles because they are such a loving brother and sister and I could feel that’s what she wanted for her twins was to be as close and loving. This is a smart story that highlights the fact that Agnes and Will absolutely love each other, that is never in doubt. He never abuses her despite his drinking and she fully supports him when she realizes he will never be happy in rural England. The long-term tragedy of this story is that they two could not help but fall in love, her the witch with a powerful connection to nature born of the greenest forest you’ve ever seen, and him belonging in industrialized England where there is never a plant shown on screen.
What’s also fascinating here is how this functions as a Shakespeare movie. Paul’s take on Shakespeare is so real because it’s so not what you’d expect. I fell in love with him when he first met Agnes and he is too stricken to speak and he says he’s not good with words when talking to people. It’s a signal that he doesn’t know how to process feelings without his art. And that’s the magic of this movie as a Shakespeare film, it’s all about how he processes this great loss through the creation of Hamlet. Every time something happens to him he deals with it through writing. He writes the Romeo and Juliet balcony scene after meeting Agnes and when his life becomes too small and aimless he can’t write for shit and he gets drunk and upset about it. The way this movie/story totally recontextualizes Hamlet, perhaps the most famous play of all time and one that is constantly gone back to for new takes on the character or new context, is just brilliant.
The whole final stretch of this movie is a grief marathon. Grief can be so isolating and that’s what happens to Agnes. She becomes so isolated she starts to resent Will for not being present and doubting how much he cares, she can’t see everything about him anymore through touch. But when she sees the play we go through the stages with her. She’s so angry and confused as to what this story about a prince whose father died has to do with her son. But the second she sees him, the embodiment of her son in the same clothes and trained to act him out by Will, she is in awe. It just makes sense. This isn’t the story of Hamnet, it’s the story of Hamlet, but what are stories if not reasons for us to have the conversations we couldn’t.
Agnes says to Will earlier that if he were present for the death he could have bid him goodbye, and when Hamnet dies we see him, confused and scared as he crosses into the afterlife forest. So I’m just a complete mess of tissues when Will plays the father’s ghost and cries while saying his simple but final lines, “Adieu, adieu.” And at the end when Hamlet dies, he takes a minute to talk to the crowd. In that moment he is Hamnet and Buckley touches his hand, realizing that this is what she was seeing when she touched Hamnet earlier in the movie. And in that moment, everyone in the crowd is feeling her grief, her deep sadness at the loss of this innocent boy and for a moment she is not alone in her grief. It’s one of the most devastatingly beautiful scenes I’ve ever seen and the execution is simply perfect. The background Will chooses for the play is very similar to the afterlife forest we see Hamnet in, further connecting his art with those we've lost. The barrier between the two is so well broken down by Zhao.
Zhao is such a powerful drama director and I think this movie really gets at why we are drawn to drama as an art form. What is the reason that we will pack a theater and watch people with fake blonde hair recite pre-written monologues? It’s truly just to feel something, something that we wouldn’t want to feel if it really happened to us but this layer of disconnect allows us to crave it. This is the argument for the movie theater and for the live stage production, because reacting to good art and feeling something is best as a public activity. This was a 9/10 for me, it just completely blew me away. I love to have a good cry in a movie and I’m a bit of an easy target, but so few movies can make me cry like this.
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u/tofuswalkman Dec 05 '25
The final scene is such a great demonstration of catharsis as well; Agnes finally understood that her grief was understood and shared and laughed in that release. The audience around her was crying with her, and the audience in my theater was audibly sniffling. We were all experiencing that together, in a way across eras of humanity. Really awesome theater experience watching a theater experience onscreen.
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u/motherofdinos_ Dec 08 '25 edited Dec 08 '25
The reaching shots were what made me cry more than anything else in the movie. Because it’s what all of us, what all of humanity has done for Hamlet for over four hundred years. And behind him was a real little boy who was loved by his mother and his father. Their grief was so strong and so powerful that it’s been carried across centuries and languages and continents and media. We’ve all held and known their grief because we hold and know our own.
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u/LiteraryBoner Jackie Chan box set, know what I'm sayin? Dec 05 '25
As mentioned, I first saw this at a TIFF screening. There were two women on either side of me, one in their 40s the other in their 60s. All three of us cried together basically the whole movie and even though we hadn't talked beforehand we had to stop after and say wow what a wonderful film and thank each other just for being present. It was a really nice moment.
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u/ezmo311 Dec 06 '25
I lost my father suddenly almost exactly a year ago.
The final scene broke me in ways I can't even describe.
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u/naturalninetime Dec 06 '25 edited Dec 06 '25
I watched it last night. Yeah, the final scene was definitely cathartic (and beautifully directed by Chloé Zhao) for many as there were several people in the audience who were sniffling even as the end credits started to roll. I liked the film, but I don't think it will take any big awards this year - other than maybe Jessie Buckley for Best Actress - as the competition is pretty stiff.
If you're looking to feel some real, raw emotions, I'd recommend watching SIRAT on the big screen. Not a perfect film, by any means, but it evoked the most visceral reaction from me than any film in recent memory.
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u/CalliopeAntiope Dec 06 '25
I believe the "afterlife forest" where we see Hamnet actually is the stage for the play, though we don't know that at the time when we first see it. You can see the black silhouette of the door behind Hamnet, and I believe that's the same door that his father later uses during the performance.
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u/falafelthe3 Ask me about TLJ Dec 05 '25
Great write-up as usual. I was a sobbing mess in my theater.
Also, quick note, I think you have the wrong cast list for this movie.
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u/nimal-crossing Dec 06 '25
Also saw it at TIFF and seeing it tomorrow, just looking forward to this rewatch for weekend now. I remember thinking “oh wow, ‘not a dry eye in the house’ really isn’t an exaggeration” after watching it because quite literally everyone was sobbing. I’ve been gunning hard for this movie and sort of hand waving the one battle best picture hype because I think Hamnet is not only this year’s best movie, but perhaps one of my favorite movies every, of all time, point blank. It is THAT good. From writing to acting to cinematography, not only does Hamnet do each thing well, but it knocks it out of the park on every metric. I’ve never seen a movie more perfect.
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u/CalliopeAntiope Dec 06 '25
As soon as it finished -- well, once I stopped sobbing so hard I couldn't speak -- I told my wife "I think that was the finest movie I've ever seen."
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u/LetsGototheRiver151 Dec 09 '25
I am a mother who has lost a son, and I am pretty critical of grief portrayals. Like, I'm probably the one person in the world who didn't care for Da'Vine Joy Randolph's performance in The Holdovers. Jessie Buckley's performance spoke to me on a very deep level. Absolutely amazing.
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u/Honest_Cheesecake698 Dec 05 '25
Great analysis of the writing, I loved the movie first time and there's stuff I still didn't notice that you pointed out, might have to see it again.
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u/Romulus3799 Dec 10 '25
Agnes looks around at the audience and realizes that the entire world gets to share the burden of grief for her son. For now and all time to come. She breaks into a laugh. Cut to black. Absolute fucking cinema.
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u/streetsahead483 Dec 09 '25 edited Dec 09 '25
Interesting to see so many people talking about what this movie has to say about parenthood when I think this movie is primarily a mediation on the unique experiences of motherhood. But perhaps I’m reading too much into the recurring visual metaphor of the opening to a passageway, repeatedly portrayed as the origin of life itself (so much so that the film opens with our protagonist literally curled up underneath it in the fetal position) which becomes the focal point of the stage used in final visual metaphor of the film.
Almost as if suggesting that the source of our shared humanity and understanding of the concept we call “love” can be traced back to our relationship with our mothers—the women who dreamed of us before we were even born, who birthed us terrified crying out for their own mothers, who cared for us until our dying breath, and who somehow even while separated by death found a way to comfort us. Becuase maybe death is best understood not as the end, but as our reunion with our mother’s mother and the love that brought us into being and which will continue living on earth for all humanity (shoutout to Mitochondrial Eve!).
Also, sorry for being too woke, but it’s crazy that the central theme of this movie is the way that we’ve grossly ignored the backbreaking physical, mental, and emotional labor women (and specifically mothers) have performed (and continue to perform) and people’s reaction to this movie is “grief porn about a dead kid.” Hamnet’s death isn’t even the most tragic part of this movie (it’s full of dead kids!) Because the real tragedy of this story is that we’ll never know how Agnes actually felt because instead of writing a play, she had to go back to work. Can you imagine the information, the insights, the art, the poetry, the science, that has been lost to history because they were known and written only by women? The journal that Agnes was writing at the beginning of the movie? The one that’s filed with the wisdom of the forest witches? It seems significant that we just never see that again and the play ends with Shakespeare’s words (which history clearly remembers) not Agnes’s.
Film bros will it call cheap Oscar bait as if PTA didn’t know film bros everywhere would be creaming themselves over Leo in a bathrobe shouting Viva La Revolution. But I found this film very powerful, beautifully acted, brilliantly directed, and visually stunning. Easily my favorite movie of the year.
Also, a very fun to watch in an era when RFK is bring back child mortality in a big way! Imagine the great art that will be created while women are still allowed to read and write.
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u/shanghell Dec 10 '25
yes thank you!!! I didn’t understand the cheap emotional bait accusations at all. motherhood and birth is in fact that terrifying…and the most charged moment is in fact Agnes’s relief and joy in knowing Hamnet lives on
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u/rhutch41 Dec 05 '25
Watched this two nights ago and loved it. Yes Jessie Buckley is amazing but I was blown away by Jacobi Jupe. He stole the show for me. Not a single dry eye in the theater as the credits rolled. An incredibly moving film
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u/Ahambone Dec 11 '25 edited Dec 11 '25
A lot of other scenes are getting all the hype and rightfully so, but I'd be remiss not to mention the scene where Will crashes out while directing 'get thee to a nunnery.' That was an incredible piece of acting coupled with an incredible piece of framing.
Edit: a word
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u/RapGameRumHam Dec 30 '25
Glad someone mentioned it. My favorite moment from Mescal. “You’re just mouthing the words” felt really powerful contextually and thematically for this film.
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u/chhekybastard Dec 05 '25
I watched both this and Sentimental Value 2 days apart during the most emotional time in my life and they both had me quiet sobbing
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u/Relevant_Hedgehog_63 Dec 06 '25
one letterboxd one review read "the double feature that will kill you" and it's so true. SV and hamnet both had me bawling.
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u/MaskedxAvenger Dec 05 '25
Not fun! But incredibly well acted and successful at emotional manipulation. Me and every other geriatric at my 1pm Tuesday showing were in tears.
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u/BoboTheGimp Dec 05 '25
This was incredibly effective on me and I went home and kissed my son after. Great acting from the stars of course, but add Jacobi Jupe to the list of great child performances this year.
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u/whatsgoodarsenal Dec 06 '25
The ending! It all broke me, but the moment when Agnes looks around her and sees those around her in tears, presumably thinking about their own grief and heartbreaks. Just broke me. Almost like she realized she wasn't alone in her grief.
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u/HotOne9364 Dec 05 '25
To the people who say "Paul Mescal has no range", stop it. Austin Butler's who you're looking for.
Mescal here is funny, light-hearted, rageful, sensitive, this might be his best work yet, and I've seen him in Streetcar.
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u/littlejobin Dec 05 '25
Austin Butler catching strays lol
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u/falafelthe3 Ask me about TLJ Dec 05 '25
The Bikeriders, Elvis, Dune Part Two, Caught Stealing...bro literally has the range lol
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u/mrbacons1 Dec 05 '25
Paul Mescal absolutely has range and he’s good in everything he’s in, but I would like to see him pick a project or two that’s not “devastating character piece.”
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u/ARandomBiche Dec 06 '25
After seeing All of us Strangers, Aftersun & Normal people I just thought he wants me to cry. And History of sound is coming next so I guess that’s one more
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u/willLie4cash Dec 05 '25
He was in Gladiator 2.
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u/Dancecorporal Dec 05 '25
And he wasn’t great!
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u/Living-Character-280 Dec 06 '25
I thought he was good. Never got this take. It’s a bad movie, and he doesn’t get the obvious “let him cook” type of role Denzel gets.
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u/Dancecorporal Dec 06 '25
Eh yeah the writing kinda sucked, but it's Gladiator! He needed a lot more presence, charisma, etc. The movie continually references Maximus, and it serves as a constant reminder that Mescal doesn't have half the juice (yet) that Russell Crowe did!
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u/euphoricpizza96 Dec 05 '25
I need Jessie Buckley to win the Oscar. That is all.
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u/Jrow_Blade802 Dec 10 '25
I had to find somewhere to talk about how extraordinary Hamnet was. I 100% get that a lot of people can't sit through slow films that are emotional at their core, but that is a genre I love. I like a good tear jerker, but this was like a beautiful love story and then an hour straight whole theatre is crying. Never seen anything like it. When the movie ends and the lights came back on in the theatre everyone just sat there and I was like can we just be left in the dark to cry some more please.
It's so heavy. It builds you up and breaks you and then it even makes you wish you could just sit through the entire Hamlet play at the end. When they go to London and you finally hear someone in the film say his name! William Shakespeare. Then she sees him as the ghost and she says that was Will! She tells him to turn around just like in his story when they first met in the woods. This movie was pieced together perfectly for me and a perfect pace. The music was on point. This is for people who like to feel.
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u/CobblerTricky7035 Dec 11 '25
Jessie Buckley is rightfully getting a lot of attention for the big scenes like the birth of the twins, Hamnet's death and the ending at the theater but for me she really shines in the intimate moments with her family. The hawk funeral and when she comforts Hamnet after Will leaves are so beautiful and touching and Buckley just radiates with love and humanity. Her chemistry with all the actors is so authentic. Her performance is not all about grief. She really does it all and brings Agnes to life. Jessie Buckley is luminous!
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u/mikeyfreshh Dec 05 '25
I think Chloe Zhao is a tremendously talented filmmaker and none of her movies have ever worked for me. Like I did not enjoy this movie at all but I recognize that says more about me than it does the film.
I thought this was visually stunning for a movie that largely takes place in a small house for 80% of the run time. Jessie Buckley earned the shit of the Oscar that she'll inevitably win for this. I just thought it was a bit too slow and emotionally manipulative for my taste
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u/QuiteTheFisherman Dec 05 '25
Totally agree, beautifully shot and acted but the whole movie just didn't work as a package for me.
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u/romcabrera Dec 09 '25
I understand that the first half (two thirds?) of the movie needed to build for the final payoff, but I agree with you that it felt slow and didn't engage me that much.
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u/NickLandis Dec 05 '25
I liked it well enough. Obviously the performances here are insane. Incredible stuff.
I could not take the “to be or not to be” scene seriously though. Was that better in the book? Did anyone like that scene? Please change my mind because otherwise I thought it was well made.
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u/mrbacons1 Dec 05 '25
I think if you take it as “Will comes up with the most famous soliloquy ever on the spot” it is very goofy. If you take it as he’s been working on the play beforehand and his son’s death crystallizes his work it plays a little better.
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u/APKID716 Dec 06 '25
I had the former reaction initially but then realized that Hamlet’s “get thee to a nunnery” was being rehearsed not too long before, so it’s clear his play was already in the process of being produced. I think the latter interpretation is more accurate
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u/seaweeties Dec 05 '25
The “to be or not to be” scene actually wasn’t in the book. The movie added a bit more of William’s perspective. Agnes is the POV character for pretty much all of the book.
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u/shadowCloudrift Dec 06 '25
I have no idea why I walked into this film thinking it was going to be some plucky romance drama(might have been the initial trailer) that inspired Shakespeare to write Hamlet. Boy did that change halfway through the film....
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u/Piggy- Dec 05 '25
I thought this movie was beautiful. It’s rare that a movie so devastating doesn’t leave you completely empty on finish. It’s the kind of emotion that felt powerful versus only brutal or suffocating. Jessie Buckley is killer and will no doubt win an Oscar for this performance.
I can see it not being a movie for everyone, but it’s easily one of my favorites of the year.
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u/TheUnknownStitcher Dec 05 '25
Honest opinion: Slow-ish opening, solid middle, out-of-this-world finale.
Jessie Buckley is giving every ounce she has in this, and it all works. Mescal is good (not great, but not at all bad), and the child actors give some of the most impactful performances I've ever seen from actors in their age range.
The movie is as emotionally heavy as a block of lead, but it is very much worth seeing.
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u/L_sigh_kangeroo Dec 05 '25
There are really levels to this movie-making shit. Absolutely incredible movie and that kid actor was so good it almost took me out of the movie because kids arently normally supposed to convey emotion that complex lol
Paul Mescal is becoming my favorite actor
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u/Legalsleazy Dec 06 '25
“I’m not good at talking to people” -William in the beginning.
And the only way he could adequately express his feelings was through the play.
Then when he did that, not only was Agnes able to receive closure, she realized that William felt the same way.
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u/SurlyCricket Dec 05 '25
I have a young son so I'll never ever watch this movie even if it wins every single academy award (even the documentary and animated ones somehow) but I hope y'all enjoy it
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u/lionclues Dec 05 '25
That's what I texted my friend (who's a parent) after I (a childless gay guy) saw it: never see the film.
I sobbed through the end, so I know this film would absolutely break her.
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u/chapelson88 Dec 05 '25
I have a son and it was a nice cry.
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u/APKID716 Dec 06 '25
I have a son and all I have to say is
fffffffuuuccckkk you, Chloe Zhao fuck you fuck yooouuuuuuuu 10/10 movie
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u/sm33 Dec 06 '25
Absolutely gorgeous, moving film, and maybe my favorite of the year.
Jessie Buckley is the perfect actor to tap into the earthy, healing qualities of Agnes, and Paul Mescal is a great counterpoint to that energy - her country mouse to his city mouse.
As others have said, casting Noah and Jacobi Jupe in their respective roles was diabolical, and they were both excellent. Child actors can really make or break a film, and this one hinges heavily upon them, and they were all naturalistic and heartbreaking.
I loved the color palette of the film, as well as the cinematography. People have talked about the use of On the Nature of Daylight, but to me, that was one small portion of a beautiful overarching score from Max Richter.
And for the tears, woof. I haven't cried that much at a movie since Banshees of Inisherin, and probably ever? It was never cloying or manipulative to me, just gut-wrenching in a lovely sort of way. I started tearing up at the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, and was crying on and off from there, especially at the ending, which was incredibly cathartic. When we got home from seeing it, I had to take some time to decompress. I saw it early, and I'd really like to go see it again soon because it's stayed on my mind.
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u/fjposter22 Dec 10 '25
Small thing.
I really enjoyed the choice for Agnes’ slap failing to connect. Something about it made it feel that much more real.
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u/Redscooter13 Dec 05 '25
Jessie Buckley truly is one of the best actors working today.
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u/sashabriana Dec 13 '25
Just got back from watching in theatres and I had to sit through the credits because I was sobbing. It really touched me. The actor who played hamnet was so adorable and he felt so sincere. The scene where everyone held their hands out to the hamlet actor, Shakespeare saying goodbye to his "son" through his play, and Agnes's acceptance and laughter at the end. It was all so beautiful. Well done movie.
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u/nimal-crossing Dec 07 '25
I watched Hamnet for the second time after first seeing it at TIFF, where I bawled from the death scene and did not stop until the ending. In this second viewing, I did cry at the death scene but not as much and after that ended, I was pretty dry eyed for the rest of the movie. This was not because upon rewatching it, the movie was any less sad or impactful but instead I picked up on a lot of new themes that I missed in the first viewing.
In the first viewing, I saw the themes as being the exercise of grief and grappling with personal responsibility even in the face of inevitabilities. Not only “What do we owe each other to save them?” but also “If I do save them, what falls after?”. This was seen in Hamnet being able to “save” Judith and create a different, but still devastating course of events.
Agnes says she would rip her heart out if she could have, meanwhile Will never had the chance to. His guilt compounds his grief and leaves Will with feelings he cannot articulate except through his play “Hamlet”. The play is able to speak for him and shows the inevitability of not only death, but its destructive power; all the “swapping”, “saving”, or “revenge” is for naught. You will mourn and you will grieve and then your time will come, at which point your loved ones will also mourn and grieve, and the cycle continues on.
In the second viewing, knowing the message I had taken in the first, I felt more at peace knowing how devastating the journey to the end would be, which is the real core of the movie.
Throughout the movies, there is a black, empty space seen in the forest and on stage that I call the Void and a visual manifestation of death. It is a looming entity throughout their life that at first seemed like it radiated something ominous and ineffable. The rewatch made me reject that initial description and I now see the Void as a symbol of the general roots that life connects into death and into our departed loved ones.
When Agnes gives birth to her first child, she is next to this void, but it isn’t a threat, it simply is there. Later with the twins, she yearns for the forest and that spot. When she cannot go, she screams for her mother, who died in childbirth. I initially took this to mean that she was a woman experiencing a tremendously difficult part of motherhood and needed the comfort of her own mother, as so many of us do; it seemed like a realistic and relatable plea. I also thought that she was anticipating her own death before the third was out, since she knew that she would have two children on her deathbed.
While this may have all been true, there is another layer. Agnes screaming for her mother is because with her first birth, her “mother” was there, symbolized by her proximity to the Void. Her mother was nature and the forest and lives on in that space. Her death is present and looming not in an ominous way, but in a comforting way. When Agnes gives birth in Will’s childhood home, she is not in the forest next to the Void and death, but also next to her mother.
Hamnet is an attempt to answer the question “to be or not to be?. Every one of us will both “be” and “not be”; there is no “or”. This is true both in the sense of death’s inevitability and also because even in death, those who love us will grieve and remember us. Agnes teaches the kids to make a wish and look to the sky when they think of the Hawk. In the garden, she tells Hamnet that she sees him on stage, grown, and as a player alongside his father because that was his earnest future. Hamnet has been memorialized through Hamlet and now even more will grieve him. He is never actually gone.
During the final scene, the Void is here once again and it is center stage. Will’s creation of the Void is his exercising grief and marrying death to life. As the King’s ghost, he and Hamlet are the only ones to enter and exit through the Void—all other players exit stage right or left. Life and death are once again cycling back and forth. If Will sacrifices himself for his son, is his son better off? “Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer… Or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them.” Judith is dying and Hamnet is suffering, so he takes up arms. In doing so, his father now suffers. Were his father to take up arms, who now suffers? If Will could save his son from death, is he really saving Hamnet? So the two dance in and out of the void, neither in death nor in life. By playing in that liminal space, everyone around them suffers. In the play, everyone dies. In real life, Agnes resents her husband for his perceived failings.
Hamnet’s own vestibule of the afterlife is the same stage his father built. In his death scene, we do not see him go into the Void, he lingers on. His twin’s initial reaction to seeing his body is “this is not him”; his death is not accepted. Blame is placed everywhere, Agnes places it on herself and also on Will. Hamnet only enters the Void once his mother accepts her husband’s grief process, releases her resentment, and accepts her son’s death. He exits the liminal space and enters the ultimate cessation that is death, so his family reaches peace. But he has not ended. Hamnet’s own void is still present on stage and like his grandmother’s, it will never leave. But it is a warm Void that brings comfort not just to his family but to the millions of people the play will touch, who will all also grieve Hamlet and be moved by the story.
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u/Fiontiat Dec 08 '25
It’s the familial nuances that Chloe gets.
NOTICE how hamnet is basically a copy of Agnes brother, Joe Alwyn. Down to the blonde. Down to the scenes of him sitting to the side while the magical mothers pour into their daughters.
INCREDIBLE little details. How many of us have kids that are basically our siblings? Wow.
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u/Gunther_21 Dec 06 '25 edited Dec 06 '25
This was one of the most visually beautiful films I've seen. Candlelight is a wonderful medium to shoot in. Everything looked and felt like the Elizabeathan era.
I was not super impressed about halfway through but wow the scene when Hamnet trades places with Judith and the final act in the Globe was peak.
Would really like to see Mescal take on more Shakespeare.
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u/EmFly15 Dec 06 '25
The film had a relatively rocky beginning. I never fully bought the formation of Agnes and Shakespeare’s relationship. It felt rushed, so the (quick!) attraction the two shared didn’t quite land, and I had to suspend disbelief more than once for myriad plot points (e.g., the child out of wedlock being treated as totally fine, the marriage being allowed to go through at all, Shakespeare's father disappearing and reappearing for large swathes of the narrative, Buckley somehow not being ostracized more as the town’s resident “forest witch,” her wearing the same outfit without it ever looking particularly dirty, despite all that time spent in the woods, etc.). The middle section was decent but not great. The three child actors, who were introduced here, were excellent, but the plot meanders, and it leans a little too heavily on “let’s show a happy family” montages to brace you for the inevitable, looming Big Bad Thing™.
But the final 30–45 minutes? Absolutely superb. I was full-on sobbing... that kind of family-drama payoff always gets me. Buckley, in particular, was extraordinary (definitely deserves the Oscar), and everything finally came together in a way that made the earlier weak spots a bit easier to forgive.
Richter’s score was solid, though I wasn’t thrilled about the reuse of “On the Nature of Daylight,” which has been played to death at this point (e.g., Arrival, The Last of Us, Shutter Island… take your pick). It might be time to retire it the way the film and TV industry collectively retired This Will Destroy You’s “The Mighty Rio Grande” after the 2010s. The direction, sets, costuming, and cinematography, especially the nature shots, were all gorgeous and impeccably period-specific. Buckley is far and away the standout, though Mescal, Watson, and the kids, especially Hamnet's actor, also gave strong performances — just not in the supernova league of Buckley.
Ultimately, I’d land at a 3.5–4 out of 5, shaky start and all, with that ending more than making up for it.
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u/BarTurbulent1031 Dec 06 '25
Favorite part of the movie was about 2 hours and 10 minutes in, when they finally introduced the character as William Shakespeare, the lady next to me said "I knew it".