Hamnet (film): Difference between revisions

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|{{Won}}

| align=”center” |<ref>{{Cite web |last=Hammond |first=Pete |date=2025-10-01 |title=Lucy Liu, Chloé Zhao, ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Among Honorees For Critics Choice 4th Celebration Of AAPI Cinema & Television |url=https://deadline.com/2025/10/lucy-liu-chloe-zhao-kpop-demon-hunters-aapi-cinema-amp-tv-1236567413/ |access-date=2025-10-16 |website=Deadline |language=en-US}}</ref>

! scope=”row” rowspan=”11″ | [[Critics’ Choice Movie Awards]]

| rowspan=”11″ | [[31st Critics’ Choice Awards|January 4, 2026]]

| [[Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Best Picture|Best Picture]]

| ”Hamnet”

| {{pending}}

| rowspan=”11″ align=”center” | <ref name=”C31″>{{cite web|url=https://www.criticschoice.com/2025/12/05/nominations-announced-for-the-31st-annual-critics-choice-awards-hosted-by-chelsea-handler/|title=NOMINATIONS ANNOUNCED FOR THE 31ST ANNUAL CRITICS CHOICE AWARDS HOSTED BY CHELSEA HANDLER|website=[[Critics Choice Association]]|date=December 5, 2025|accessdate=December 5, 2025}}</ref>

| [[Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Best Director|Best Director]]

| Chloé Zhao

| {{pending}}

| [[Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Best Actress|Best Actress]]

| Jessie Buckley

| {{pending}}

| [[Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Best Supporting Actor|Best Supporting Actor]]

| Paul Mescal

| {{pending}}

| [[Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Best Young Performer|Best Young Actor/Actress]]

| Jacobi Jupe

| {{pending}}

| [[Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Best Acting Ensemble|Best Casting and Ensemble]]

| [[Nina Gold]]

| {{pending}}

| [[Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Best Adapted Screenplay|Best Adapted Screenplay]]

| Chloé Zhao and Maggie O’Farrell

| {{pending}}

| [[Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Best Cinematography|Best Cinematography]]

| Łukasz Żal

| {{pending}}

| [[Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Best Costume Design|Best Costume Design]]

| Malgosia Turzanska

| {{pending}}

| [[Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Best Production Design|Best Production Design]]

| Fiona Crombie and Alice Felton

| {{pending}}

| [[Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Best Score|Best Score]]

| Max Richter

| {{pending}}

! scope=”row” rowspan=”2″ | [[The Gotham Film & Media Institute|Gotham Film Awards]]

2025 film by Chloé Zhao

Hamnet is a 2025 historical drama film co-edited and directed by Chloé Zhao, who co-wrote the screenplay with Maggie O’Farrell, the author of the title novel this film is based on. The film’s largely fictional story dramatises the marriage between Anne Hathaway (Agnes Hathaway in the novel and film)^[a] and William Shakespeare, and the impact of the tragic death of their 11-year-old son Hamnet on their relationship, which inspires Shakespeare’s play Hamlet.^[5] It stars Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal as Agnes and William, alongside Emily Watson and Joe Alwyn in supporting roles.

Hamnet had its premiere at the 52nd Telluride Film Festival on 29 August 2025 and received a limited theatrical release by Focus Features in the United States and Canada on 26 November. It is scheduled for a wide theatrical release on 5 December and is set to be released by Universal Pictures in the United Kingdom on 9 January 2026. The film received widespread acclaim from critics, with particular attention directed to Buckley and Mescal’s performances. It was listed among the top ten films of 2025 by the American Film Institute.

A written prologue states that in Stratford, Renaissance England, “Hamnet” and “Hamlet” were considered the same name.^[6]

A red-dressed Agnes (pronounced “AHN-yes”) Hathaway walks in a forest, summoning a hawk to land on her falconry glove. William Shakespeare, an ear-ringed Latin tutor, leaves his students and visits Hathaway’s barn, where they chat and then kiss, but she then tells him to go and stay away.

Agnes does not discourage gossip that labels her a forest witch’s daughter; her mother has taught her herbal lore (including the Old English Nine Herbs Charm); which Agnes later uses to heal a cut on William’s forehead. Her mother died young, and Agnes, sorrowing, grew up with a stepmother who didn’t care for her.

Agnes spends time in the forest, where there is a mysterious cave. William visits her again, and she asks the awkward young man for a story. He recounts the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, much to Agnes’s delight. She holds his hand and foretells his future as something great; she also sees herself dying with two children.

The pair have sex, and she becomes pregnant. Her parents banish her from their house; William’s family is not happy about their prospective marriage, but they marry. Agnes has her first child, Susanna, in the woods, where William and her brother, Bartholomew, find her and see that she and the child are well.

William’s father John, a businessman, calls William worthless and forcibly tries to prevent him from leaving a room where William does manual labor; he strikes William twice, and the second time William pushes John against the wall forcefully and says he will not tolerate abuse again.

Agnes, pregnant again, sees William’s frustrated attempts at writing and realizes that he must go to London to immerse himself in the theater community there; he leaves her and Susanna in Stratford. William’s mother Mary restrains Agnes from going to the woods to give birth. In agony, Agnes gives birth to a boy, Hamnet, and then to a girl, Judith, who seems stillborn, but Agnes revives the baby, noting that it would not go to heaven since Agnes lacks faith.

The twins are very close and full of fun; they even fool William, when he visits, by dressing as each other. The three children delight their parents by enthusiastically playing the witches’ scene in Macbeth. Agnes predicts that Hamnet, who wants to be a swordsman in his father’s theater company, will flourish. William’s career is successful, and the family buys the largest house in Stratford.

Agnes’s bird dies and the family buries it in a ceremony in the forest; Agnes tells them a story about the bird carrying off their wishes in its heart, and Hamnet agrees with his mother that one can see the bird’s spirit in the air. (Throughout the film, a song about a bird is often sung.)

In London, William sees a puppet show depicting the plague carrying people off to death. In Stratford, Judith, a delicate child, contracts the plague, but Hamnet evokes the tale of the deceased bird to encourage her. Later, he lies beside her and proclaims he wants to take her place. Judith recovers, but Hamnet sickens; he envisions himself in an empty house, calling for his mother. Hamnet dies in agony, and Agnes screams in sorrow. William returns home and finds his son has just died.

Agnes is filled with anger that William is returning to London so soon after Hamnet dies; they physically struggle but reconcile. She finds she cannot predict the future anymore. Back in London, by the Thames, William considers suicide, as he ruefully gives his character Hamlet’s speech, “To be or not to be”.

Agnes’ stepmother, whom she rebukes as never having cared about her, gives her a print notice circulating in the town announcing that the Tragedie of Hamlet will be performed in London. Agnes is upset that William has invoked the name of their dead son in his new play. In London, William rehearses Hamlet, frustrated with his actors for not showing passion; he demonstrates how to speak the dialogue with intensity and vigor.

Agnes and Bartholomew secretly attend the first performance of Hamlet. She is outraged at first, thinking that Hamnet’s name is being profaned. However, she begins to appreciate that the play is a tribute to her son. William plays Hamlet’s father’s ghost, and a scene with him and Hamlet intrigues her. She is proud that he is depicted wielding a sword with great skill as her son had hoped to do.

When Hamlet, dying, nears the edge of the stage, she reaches forward to touch the actor’s hand, and the audience, caught up in the emotion of the scene, also reach out their hands to him. She envisions Hamnet, in the empty house, moving from sadness to a smile, and walking into the backstage and disappearing through a hole reminiscent of her mystical cave in the forest. Agnes laughs and then silently smiles happily for the first time since his death.

A stage production of Maggie O’Farrell‘s novel was announced in November 2022,^[7] with the film rights having been acquired prior to publication by London-based Liza Marshall and her company Hera Pictures, who then partnered with Neal Street Productions.^[8] In April 2023, Chloé Zhao was hired to direct the film, and would write the screenplay alongside O’Farrell.^[9]

In May, Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley entered negotiations to star in the film.^[10] Mescal confirmed in a January 2024 interview that he and Buckley would star.^[11]

Principal photography was originally scheduled to begin in London on 3 June 2024.^[12] Production instead began in Wales on 29 July 2024, and wrapped on 30 September. While most of the film was shot in Herefordshire, England, scenes were also filmed in London at the Charterhouse, which served as the largest London location for the production.^[13]^[14] Joe Alwyn and Emily Watson were added to the cast in August, and Steven Spielberg joined the film as a producer.^[15] Łukasz Żal was the cinematographer^[16] and Max Richter the film’s composer.^[17] whose 2004 “On the Nature of Daylight” played “behind the searingly emotional finale”.^[18]

Focus Features acquired US distribution rights to Hamnet in August 2024, with its parent company Universal Pictures handling its international distribution.^[15] It had its world premiere at the 52nd Telluride Film Festival on 29 August 2025.^[19] In July 2025, the film was announced as part of the Gala Presentations lineup of the 50th 2025 Toronto International Film Festival,^[20]^[21] where it won the prestigious People’s Choice Award.^[22] It was screened in the non-competitive section ‘Grand public’ of the 20th Rome Film Festival in October 2025 before its theatrical release,^[23] in the official selection of the 70th Valladolid International Film Festival on 27 October 2025 (for its Spanish premiere),^[24] and closed the 38th Tokyo International Film Festival on 5 November 2025.^[25]

The film got a limited theatrical release in the United States on 26 November 2025, ahead of a wide release one week later on 5 December 2025.^[26] It will later be released in the United Kingdom on 9 January 2026, and in Australia on 15 January.^[27]

Literary references

[edit]

In addition to adapting O’Farrell’s book, the film repeatedly quotes from the Old English Nine Herbs Charm, an alliterative spell (galdor) from Anglo-Saxon England. The film quotes from two translations of the text: one from philologist Joseph S. Hopkins and another from Stephen Pollington. Regarding the use of his translation in the film, Hopkins says “It is a great joy to play a role in presenting the Nine Plants Spell to such a large audience in the contemporary period, surely providing the most exposure the spell has received since Anglo-Saxon England”.^[28]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 88% of 145 critics’ reviews are positive. The website’s consensus reads: “Breaking hearts and mending them in one fell swoop, Hamnet speculates on the inspiration behind Shakespeare’s masterpiece with palpable emotional force thanks to Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal’s astonishing performances.”^[29] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 82 out of 100, based on 42 critics, indicating “universal acclaim”.^[30]

Buckley’s performance in particular was widely praised. David Fear of Rolling Stone opined that people “will be talking about Jessie Buckley’s performance for years”.^[31] Screen Daily‘s Tim Grierson thought Mescal’s role was similar to his previous work but “the regularly superb Buckley is revelatory as a wild creature who experiences the exhilaration of motherhood as well as the heartbreak of loss.”^[32] Johnny Oleksinski at New York Post wrote that “it’s Buckley who’s giving one of those rare turns that simply beggars belief. She swings back and forth from cast iron to porcelain. The actress is thunderous, playful, grounded and ethereal.”^[33] Peter Debruge [de] of Variety declared the film to be “so emotionally raw as to be almost excruciating at times” “featuring a heroic performance from Jessie Buckley”.^[34]

Bilge Ebiri of Vulture described Hamnet as “devastating, maybe the most emotionally shattering movie I’ve seen in years”.^[35] Angie Han of The Hollywood Reporter summed the film in the bottom line as “a tremendously acted heartbreaker”.^[36] Pete Hammond of Deadline Hollywood wrote that Hamnet, “with its quiet determination to say much about how art is affected by life, is unlike anything else”.^[37]

David Ehrlich of IndieWire affirms that with Hamnet, “it would be hard to imagine a more fitting tribute to Shakespeare’s most widely interpreted play.” On the performances, Ehrlich notes that the character of Agnes is not built on tropes but is “anchored by the primordial rawness of Buckley’s astonishing performance.” Whereas on Mescal’s performance he found it to be “cathartically transcendent, because it at last rewards that search… as Will starts looking for his son in the space between life and death.”^[38]

Richard Lawson in The Guardian gave it four stars, calling it a “poignant adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel with a stirring tearjerker ending”.^[27]

On the contrary, The Wall Street Journal‘s Kyle Smith called it a “quintessential Oscar bait (highbrow foundation; maximal crying and emoting) but is dogged by intellectual anachronism.”^[39]

^ In her father’s will, her first name was listed as Agnes. This had led some scholars and others to claim that she should be referred to as Agnes Hathaway.^[4]
^ Also awarded to nine other films.
^ Award shared with Rental Family.