TIFF25: “Hamnet” is Chloe Zhao’s Finest
This review was originally posted on Film Obsessive.
William Shakespeare is the bane of any teenager’s existence. Throughout their school years, they’ll likely be forced to read at least one of his works in the original form. Doing this, though, won’t allow most kids to feel the true weight of William’s words, and that’s no fault of their own. It takes a lot of effort to remind them that all these now-dead authors had full lives that inspired the masterpieces teenagers are pretending to read in the 21st century. Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet saw its Canadian premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
Hament is based on Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel, Hamnet & Judith. The film opens with a statement that the names Hamlet and Hamnet were interchangeable in the court records of Stratford. It’s from this fact that O’Farrell’s speculative fiction book was likely born. O’Farrell imagines the lives of William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal), his wife, Agnes (Jessie Buckley), and their three children: Susanna (Bodhi Rae Breathnach), Judith (Olivia Lynes), and Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe). O’Farrell’s novel posits that Shakespeare’s Hamlet was maybe written in response to the death of Hamnet as a young child. The film begins with the first meeting between William and Agnes and continues to the first performance of Hamlet.
Buckley and Mescal are impeccable performers. The warmth in their acting radiates from the screen. Even though both have been in their fair share of films and have become notable actors to a certain subset of movie lovers, they have the ability to disappear within a role. You never feel as though they’re borrowing from a past performance or holding back something in Hamnet. Mescal and Buckley leave everything in the film. Every breath, every scream, every laugh feels unique and alive. Yes, we’re watching scripted performances that have been worked and reworked, meticulously planned, but Buckley and Mescal don’t ever let that fatigue set in. Their chemistry is bursting with love and life, sweeping everyone up in the joy that comes from a deep connection like the one their characters have. It’s still early in the awards season, but it’s hard to think of another performance that will outdo these. Even the standout performance of Amanda Seyfried in The Testament of Ann Lee can’t overcome the sheer magnitude of what Buckley does here. It’s no knock on Seyfried. Another year and Seyfried would be a slam dunk, but Buckley is blazing in Hamnet. She is passion, fury, and fire, a profound exploration of motherhood.
courtesy of TIFF
Even though this is a film that examines a hypothetical purpose behind the writing of Hamlet, it’s not a biopic about William Shakespeare. In fact, that name isn’t uttered until the very end of the film. For most of Hamnet, Mescal’s character is referred to as the Latin tutor. Agnes’ brother (Joe Alwyn) refers to him as “a pasty-faced scholar.” If someone, somehow, came into the film not knowing this was related to Shakespeare, however, there are little breadcrumbs scattered throughout. After an early meeting between William and Agnes, we see William hunched over a desk in the dead of night, writing by candlelight. He murmurs something about a rose by any other name.
Hamnet is not a film about William Shakespeare the playwright, but William Shakespeare the father, and the husband he might have been. How his ambitions took him away from the city because his wife was too connected to the woods to give them up for the hustle and bustle of London. Hamnet postulates that the writing of Hamlet was William’s means of treading through the loss of his only son. He may be good with the written word, but when his wife begs him to mourn with her, he can’t, at least not in the way she wants him to. Hamlet is his means of mourning; of putting his grief on paper and parsing through the well of emotions within him.
Chloe Zhao is known for making humanistic works. Hamnet is no different, but it may be her finest work. Hamnet is a beautiful epic, an ode to art, nature, and the ways we’re able to connect with others, with animals, and with ourselves. To experience Hamnet is to fall in love, to be pulverized by the grand emotions that make us alive.
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