The names Hamnet and Hamlet have long been considered interchangeable when looking at Shakespeare’s work, with the latter now being the most commonly used title of one of the Great Bard’s most celebrated and recreated plays. The former was also the name of one of Shakespeare’s children, and the title of one of the most breathtaking films of 2025.
Chloé Zhao became only the second woman ever to win an Academy Award for Best Director back in 2021 for Nomadland, a film about a widow who leaves behind her life to travel around the States in her van. After an ill-fated venture into the Marvel Cinematic Universe with the much-forgotten and ignored Eternals, she has found her way back to where she’s at her best, making dramas about relationships, grief, and healing. Hamnet serves all of these themes perfectly, forcing the audience into a powerful test of the emotions. The narrative shows a new side of Shakespeare, as we focus less on the man and his works, with much of that occurring offscreen, but instead follow Anne Hathaway, the wife of William and mother to his three children.
When the titular character, their only son, passes away from an unknown illness, both parents deal with their grief in different ways. The film starts with a young William Shakespeare meeting his future wife, Anne, while teaching Latin to young boys, and we see a side of the writer not often portrayed. He looks rough, with a cut face suggested to have been inflicted by his father, and yet he still maintains a sense of admiration from an audience. He is played by Paul Mescal, who substitutes his iconic chain from Normal People for an earring here. He has vowed to take a break from our screens for the foreseeable, with his next project not expected to be until he plays Paul McCartney in 2028, but it will be a difficult two years away for the public as he shows here just why he is so special.
It’s an understated performance for the most part, with him absent for large parts of the film, but when he is onscreen, it is difficult to focus on anyone else. His wife Anne is portrayed by Jessie Buckley, who delivers a magnum opus of a performance. A one-time nominee already, she is already leading the pack for the Best Actress category at the Oscars in March, and there is nobody more deserving of it this year. There are at least two scenes of Buckley in Hamnet that would easily be considered as the best of any other actress’s career, and she manages them both in the space of two hours. The unsung stars of this film however, are Bodhi Rae Breathnach, Olivia Lynes and Jacobi Jupe, who play Susanna, Judith and Hamnet, the three Shakespeare children. All three showcase incredible talents for their age, and promising careers are sure to be in all of their futures.
Hamnet is a film that perfectly encapsulates the beauty of theatre. The film’s closing scene shows us snippets of the first live performance of Hamlet, and the emotion that pours out is so moving to the audience in the Globe theatre, and in cinemas watching it. Little is mentioned about Shakespeare and his work in the film, in fact his name is only used once and it is before this final scene, but that is why the film hits such an emotional chord. We see the people, not the name, and Hamlet is William’s cathartic output into the world. There is no purer art form than theatre, and it takes a film to show this to everyone. While Hamnet will maintain its emotional impact upon rewatches, the film will nonetheless stay the same. Go see Hamlet live, or any other theatrical production, and you will bear witness to a unique event, confined to that moment, in the very room you are in. That is the power of theatre.
