Movie Review | Hamnet

Hamnet (Photo – Focus Features)

“But this prying into the family life of a great man,” objects a character in James Joyce’s Ulysses while listening to a theory about Shakespeare’s Hamlet and how the play reflected his private struggles. The theory bears a thematic similarity to the plot of Hamnet, the new film by Chloé Zhao.

Hamnet
Directed by Chloé Zhao – 2025
Reviewed by Garrett Rowlan

While I believe in poetic license, at times the film seemed to play fast and loose with the scant documentation of the Bard’s home life, not just taking liberties but programming them to bludgeon the audience with maximum impact. This was one of the two reasons why I found Hamnet ultimately disappointing.

The other reason is the film’s overwhelming grimness. I haven’t read the novel by Maggie O’Farrell, but I know that in fiction, it’s easy to emphasize the emotional moments, and it’s equally easy to pace oneself, take a break, etc.

In the case of Hamnet, however, there’s no pause. A happy period of courtship (which includes a cringy, unnecessary scene of a bare-assed Shakespeare, trousers down, going at it on a bench with Anne Hathaway) quickly evaporates as the film turns bleak. The audience is not spared the agony of artistic creation nor the pain of childbirth, and these are followed by even greater sufferings. By the film’s midpoint, there was hardly a scene that wasn’t soaked in some form of agony or foreboding doom. It became exhausting.

Then there’s the casting. Jessie Buckley’s Anne Hathaway is good, but it often felt like the camera was constantly in her face, focusing on her as she struts and frets at home while Will is in London making his name. Sometimes, it seemed like the filmmakers were overdoing it, positioning her for an Academy Award nomination.

Paul Mescal is a good actor, but his dark complexion and brawny build seemed better suited for a gladiator in a Roman coliseum than a playwright in England. At one point, another character calls him a “pasty-faced scholar,” but I didn’t buy it. I much preferred Joseph Fiennes’ Shakespeare in Shakespeare in Love over Mescal’s bulked-up version.

To be sure, the ending of the film is effective. Hamlet is staged while Mr. and Mrs. Shakespeare’s private drama merges with the public one. Yet, despite this, the entire film left little impression on me after the final credits, aside from a slight headache.

> Playing at Landmark Pasadena Playhouse, and AMC The Americana at Brand 18.