Name: Hamnet
Genre: Drama, Biography, Psychological
Released: 2026-02-27
Rating: 8.5
Cast: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson, Joe Alwyn

After losing their son Hamnet to the plague, Agnes and William Shakespeare struggle to cope with grief in 16th century England. A healer by nature, Agnes must gather the strength to care for her surviving children while coming to terms with her heartbreaking loss.

Hamnet

Times of India

India Today

‘Hamnet’ is a historical drama set in late 16th-century England and explores playwright William Shakespeare through a different lens. The film looks at him as a husband and father. Paul Mescal plays William with a subdued presence, while Jessie Buckley takes on the role of Agnes, his wife. The story keeps its focus close to home, observing daily life and personal loss rather than their achievements. From the outset, it is clear that this is not a film about Shakespeare’s fame or legacy but about how private sorrow can shape a life in ways that are not always visible. The film opens quietly, with Agnes in a calm state of mind amid the woods, feeding her pet eagle. There is no attempt to immediately impress viewers with spectacle. It settles into its setting slowly, allowing the audience to understand the rhythm of this household before anything changes.
The film begins with William (Paul Mescal) and Agnes (Jessie Buckley) meeting in the countryside. Their bond feels instinctive rather than dramatic. After marriage, they build a modest life together with their three children: Susanna (Bodhi Rae Breatnach), Judith (Olivia Lynes), and Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe). Much of the early part of the film is spent on ordinary routines, tending to household chores, raising children, and everyday conversations. We see the children playing together, asking questions, and depending on their parents in small ways. When Hamnet falls ill and dies at the age of eleven, the shift in tone is immediate. Agnes is shattered, unable to find language for her grief. William, often away in London for work, seems distant even when he is present. The story then follows how this loss unsettles their marriage and slowly feeds into the creation of Hamlet.
What stands out in ‘Hamnet’ is its patience. The film allows scenes to unfold at a natural pace, giving viewers time to absorb the characters and their world. There are stretches where very little happens on the surface, and this may test viewers who prefer a tighter narrative. The rural setting is not treated as decoration; it becomes part of the emotional landscape. The contrast between the open countryside and the darker, enclosed theater spaces later in the film reflects the shift in William’s inner world. Produced by Hollywood heavyweights Steven Spielberg and Sam Mendes, this film also avoids explaining everything through dialogue, leaving many emotions unspoken. This choice creates moments that feel honest, though it requires viewers to notice subtle changes in expression and behaviour.
Jessie Buckley’s performance as Agnes forms the emotional center of the film, and she is exceptional. She plays the character as intuitive and deeply connected to her surroundings. In the early scenes, she brings warmth without exaggeration. After Hamnet’s death, her grief feels internal rather than theatrical. Paul Mescal takes a more restrained approach as William. His portrayal suggests a man who processes pain privately, sometimes to the frustration of those around him. He avoids turning William into a popular figure and instead presents him as someone uncertain and conflicted. The distance between the two characters after the tragedy feels real and uncomfortable. Special mention must also be made of child actor Jacobi Jupe, who is remarkable in the role of Hamnet. His death scene in the film is guaranteed to break your heart.
Based on the novel ‘Hamnet’ by Maggie O’Farrell, this film asks for attention rather than demanding it. It does not provide clear explanations for how art is born from suffering, nor does it offer dramatic confrontations to release tension. Instead, it stays with the slow changes that grief brings into a home. By the end, the film leaves behind a sense of intimacy, as though we have been allowed to witness a private chapter in the lives of two people trying, and often failing, to understand their loss. It closes on a note that feels thoughtful rather than final. There is no clear resolution, only an understanding that life continues in altered form.

There are films that entertain, and then there are films that inhabit you. Hamnet, director Chloe Zhao’s deeply felt adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s bestselling novel, falls firmly into the latter category. On the surface, it imagines how William Shakespeare’s son’s death may have shaped one of the most seminal works in English literature. But to label it as being about Shakespeare is to miss the film’s beating heart: a visceral, unvarnished exploration of love, loss, identity, and the alchemy that turns personal grief into art.
For those who may not be intimately familiar with Shakespearean literature, the film serves as an evocative doorway rather than a scholarly footnote. It humanises the figure so often placed on a pedestal. Instead of presenting the Bard as an untouchable genius, Zhao shows him as a man negotiating ambition, family, and fragility. There are no grand proclamations of genius here. In fact, his name is fully whispered just once in the entire over two-hour long run-time.

The film follows young Shakespeare (played with quiet intensity by Paul Mescal) and his wife, Agnes (anchored by an extraordinary Jessie Buckley) as they build a life together in plague-era England, celebrate the births of their children, and then confront an unfathomable loss that reshapes everything.

Paul Mescal plays Shakespeare with understated restraint, allowing silence to do much of the work. Opposite him, Jessie Buckley delivers a performance that anchors the film emotionally. As Agnes, she is luminous in the early stretches, intuitive, earthy and quietly fierce. Zhao gives these moments room to breathe: domestic rhythms, playful exchanges, the texture of ordinary joy. It is precisely this grounding in everyday life that makes the eventual tragedy feel so piercing.
Buckley’s portrayal of grief is neither theatrical nor sentimental or just for effect. It is raw and often unsettling in its stillness. There are scenes where sorrow registers not in dramatic outbursts but in absence, in vacant stares, in movements slowed by invisible weight, in emptiness and loneliness that echoes quietly. In the early sequences, she conjures an Agnes who is earthy and free, sometimes fragile, sometimes fierce, always deeply alive. As the story arcs toward tragedy, Buckley’s portrayal is elemental. This is not a quiet, decorous mourning; it is a howl, a thunderclap, and sometimes a whisper all at once.

Mescal, in contrast, opts for a quieter emotional register. His Shakespeare internalises pain, his restraint creating an emotional distance that gradually widens the space between husband and wife. In a narrative shaped by absence, the absence of a child, of certainty, of answers, that emotional gulf becomes as significant as the loss itself. Their shared grief binds them, yet it also isolates them in profoundly human ways.

Zhao’s filmmaking leans into contemplation. The pacing is deliberate, occasionally bordering on languid, especially in the first act, which might make a few restless. But hang on, just enough because the patience is rewarded. The film’s emotional crescendo unfolds with a quiet inevitability. By the time the final act arrives, the stillness feels purposeful rather than indulgent.
Visually, Hamnet is intimate and tactile. Zhao’s visual language, intimate close-ups, atmospheric landscapes, and a sound design that feels alive to every leaf rustle and breath, reinforces the thematic core of the film: that human experience is as textured and layered as memory itself. There’s beauty here, yes, but it is never decorative.

Hamnet may not offer a perfect rendering of literary nuance for everyone, and purists might argue that something inevitably slips between the pages and the screen. But as a piece of filmmaking that tugs at the emotional fibers, that stretches and reshapes how you think about genius, grief, and creation, it succeeds with earnest conviction. In a season crowded with awards contenders and big-budget spectacle, this quietly devastating drama reminds us of cinema’s power at its most elemental: to make us feel, deeply and without apology.

In a year already rich with memorable films, Hamnet stands out not for spectacle, but for its willingness to sit in the ache of being human. That alone makes it well worth your time.



HAMNET - Official Trailer [HD] - Only In Theaters This Thanksgiving

Jessie Buckley is an Irish actress. Her career began in 2008 as a contestant on the BBC TV talent show I'd Do Anything in which she placed second. In the same year she appeared in the West End revival of Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music.

Jessie Buckley

Paul Mescal is an Irish actor. Born in Maynooth, he studied acting at The Lir Academy and subsequently performed in plays in Dublin theatres. Mescal rose to fame with his role in the miniseries Normal People, earning a BAFTA TV Award and a nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award.

Hamnet(2026)