{"id":13617,"date":"2025-12-09T17:36:50","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T22:36:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=13617"},"modified":"2025-12-23T17:48:00","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T22:48:00","slug":"hamnet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2025\/12\/09\/hamnet\/","title":{"rendered":"Hamnet"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Hamnet<\/strong> (2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Focus\/Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 126 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (thematic content, some strong sexuality, partial nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Chloe Zhao\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Chloe Zhao and Maggie O\u2019Farrell\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Max Richter\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Lukasz Zal\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: November 26, 2025 (US, limited)\/December 5, 2025 (US, wide)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson, Joe Alwyn, Jacobi Jupe, David Wilmot, Olivia Lynes, Bodhi Rae Breathnach, Freya Hannan-Mills, Dainton Anderson, Elliot Baxter, Noah Jupe.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ** \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0I took a course on Shakespeare while attending community college in the 80s. Up to that point, my experiences with the writings of the Bard weren\u2019t positive. Like a lot of my peers, I had a hard time understanding his words. That all changed when I took Professor George Spillane\u2019s class. He was a Shakespeare enthusiast. He helped me to understand and ultimately appreciate the playwright\u2019s work. By semester\u2019s end, I was a fan too. I would go on to read some of his plays on my own.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Hamlet is one of my favorite Shakespeare plays. It\u2019s a ghost story, a detective mystery and a revenge drama all rolled into one. I\u2019ve enjoyed most of the cinematic iterations I\u2019ve seen of it. I really wanted to love Hamnet<\/strong>, a historical drama about the origins of the play. That is, what inspired Shakespeare to write it? I thought it would make for compelling drama. Alas, it does not. This beautifully mounted production, the work of Chloe Zhao (Nomadland), is a bore. I struggled to stay awake and I wasn\u2019t even tired that day.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It starts off as a love story. William Shakespeare (Mescal, Gladiator II), not yet famous, becomes smitten with Agnes (Buckley, Wild Rose), a free-spirited woman said to be the daughter of a forest witch. She spends a lot of time in the forest being one with nature. He\u2019s intrigued and before long, they\u2019re married and expecting their first child.<\/p>\n

\u00a0They\u2019re pretty happy for the most part. Agnes encourages Will to move to London to pursue a career in theater. She stays in Stratford to raise the children, oldest daughter Susanna (Breathnach) and twins Judith (Lynes) and Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe). Tragedy strikes when 11YO Hamnet dies of the plague. It has an effect on their marriage. It also inspires him to write a new tragedy. Can you guess what that might be?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Before you all come after me with pitchforks and torches, let me just say I haven\u2019t dropped any spoilers. Hamnet<\/strong> is based on a true story. Everybody knows Shakespeare lost a child. The exact circumstances aren\u2019t known as causes of death weren\u2019t recorded in the 16th<\/sup> century. It\u2019s speculated he died of the plague that was ravaging the English countryside at the time. Scholars believe the boy\u2019s death had a profound effect on the Bard\u2019s output. They see connections between it and Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar and Romeo and Juliet. I can\u2019t speak to any of that with certainty, but I don\u2019t dismiss it either. It\u2019s definitely possible.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Taking into consideration what I said in the previous paragraph, Hamnet<\/strong> should have been a hell of a lot better. It makes for compelling drama. Instead, the film drags along at a snail\u2019s pace. It\u2019s slow and uninvolving. It\u2019s a shame that\u2019s the case because it has a lot of good qualities. Zhao has this amazing ability to effectively convey the transcendent wild beauty of nature. It\u2019s a common thread among her films. It\u2019s on great display here. The opening shot of Agnes lying in a fetal position on the forest floor says more about her character than any amount of expository dialogue. Nature plays as important a role as any of the human characters. Zhao, aided by Polish cinematographer Lukasz Zal (The Zone of Interest), imbues Hamnet<\/strong> with a gorgeous visual palette. It helps that the sets and costume, all period perfect, are right on point.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The acting isn\u2019t a problem either. In fact, it\u2019s quite great. Buckley, playing the stand-in for real-life Mrs. Shakespeare Anne Hathaway, perfectly captures Agnes\u2019 feral nature. That is to say, she\u2019s not the typical docile 16th<\/sup> century woman. She has a mind of her own and doesn\u2019t care what others think of her. It could even be argued Anne inspired The Taming of the Shrew. Mescal does a fine job as Shakespeare, an artist dealing with grief while trying to create. He has this one powerful scene where he intensely instructs his actors on how to add passion to their performances. Emily Watson (Breaking the Waves) has some good scenes as Shakespeare\u2019s mother, not the most pleasant woman in the world.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Hamnet<\/strong> is a family affair of sorts. Jacobi Jupe plays Hamnet while older brother Noah (of the Quiet Place movies) plays the actor who plays Hamlet in the play at the end. That, by the way, is the best part of the film. It\u2019s the premiere and Agnes in on hand to witness it. It\u2019s a well-done scene that turns the theater into a living, breathing organism.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I wanted to love Hamnet<\/strong>, but it just didn\u2019t pull me in emotionally. I wanted to feel the parents\u2019 grief, but I only felt boredom. It didn\u2019t pick up until the end, but by then I no longer cared that much. I know my colleagues see it differently than me. Maybe I need to see it again? I really don\u2019t know. All I can say right now is that I didn\u2019t care for Hamnet<\/strong>. I wonder what Professor Spillane would have thought of it.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hamnet (2025)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Focus\/Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 126 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (thematic content, some strong sexuality, partial nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Chloe Zhao\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Chloe Zhao and Maggie O\u2019Farrell\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Max Richter\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Lukasz Zal\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: November 26, 2025 (US, limited)\/December 5, 2025 (US, wide)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson, Joe Alwyn, Jacobi Jupe, David Wilmot, Olivia […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13618,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dramas"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Hamnet-POSTER.jpg?fit=620%2C918&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13617"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13620,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13617\/revisions\/13620"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}