Coming into watching this film, it’s important to note that I knew nothing about the story let alone any Shakespeare plays or even his back story. The film itself has Shakespeare’s story at the heart of it, even if I don’t know too much about it already it still feels to be an overused story. Yet this film does offer a fresh perspective on it.
In terms of the story of the film, the title with Hamnet (Zhao, 2025) of course signifies a lot of what I’ve just said the film will be about. It acts as a back story to William Shakespeare (played by Paul Mescal) where his play, Hamlet, is more of a biography to his life that anything else. Yet the film positions itself more from the family perspective to his life where you see from others his own back story rather than from his own perspective. This can definitely be seen as a recent trend with biographical pictures – take for example Priscilla (Coppola, 2023) which acts as a alternative second hand account of Elvis’ life – we get to see the life of an artist being from the woman’s perspective. Jessie Buckley (Agnes) plays his partner here who throughout goes through her own struggles, while Shakespeare can use art and his success to fend off his own turmoil yet she is the one who has to look after the family dynamic.
It would of course be cheap to call this a biography in the same way I highlighted with Priscilla. It creates its own story and world which represents more the life and struggle of Agnes more than anything else. At the heart of it, it shows how we are all players in other peoples lives. No matter how famous and successful Shakespeare is, there are just as compelling stories for other people in his life that have had an influence on him.
The film does a great job of giving a fresh take on a well trodden story, the main reservation I would bring to it is that the style and substance of the film. With the time of year this was released and also seeing the films Chloe Zhao has directed already, it is clear that the film is eyeing up the awards season. The film itself felt this way, it is clearly prodding the audience for an emotional response (be it the overused emotional film score or the communal call to despair) that ticks the boxes needed to win critical awards. At this point it doesn’t feel organic anymore, it knows what it wants to achieve rather than letting the story thrive upon itself. A fresh perspective can only take you so far when the feeling that an audience gets from the film isn’t something that is organically produced but instead is thrust open them.