Oscar-winning Shakespeare drama poignant but ‘manipulative’

The Shakespearean drama starring Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley has an excellent cast but is “exploitative” and lacking in subtlety – “it tugs at the heartstrings and targets the tear ducts with sheer cruelty.”

There is no doubt that Hamnet, in the eyes of many people, will be one of the films of the year. Swept away by a wave of rave reviews, it’s sure to land on dozens of “Best of 2025” lists and on thousands of Oscar ballots. None of this is surprising.

The film is based on Maggie O’Farrell’s poetic novel, one of the best-selling books of the 21st century. The other key figure behind the camera is director and co-writer, Chloe Zhao (O’Farrell herself is the other co-writer), who produced the Oscar-winning Nomadland. In front of the camera, the film features two of Ireland’s most charismatic young actors, Jesse Buckley and Paul Mescal. And there’s another creative genius involved: William Shakespeare. The premise of the novel and film is that the tragic death of Shakespeare’s 11-year-old son – the titular Hamnet – prompted the writing of the greatest play in the English language, Hamlet. In Elizabethan England, the opening commentary tells us that the names Hamnet and Hamlet were interchangeable.

But will Hamnet deliver on the promise of its outstanding employees? This is the question. True, many viewers have already fallen under its spell, but Chow and O’Farrell have stripped away so much of what makes the novel magical — the time-travel structure, the hypnotic rhythms of the prose, the interior monologues and the small, tangible details — that what’s left is no more profound or authentic than any other costume drama set in the good old days.

His early scenes aren’t a million miles away from Shakespeare in Love (1998). Buckley plays a farmer’s daughter named Anne Hathaway, or Agnes as her family calls her, and Mescal is the son of a glove maker and Latin teacher named Will. Agnes is rumored to be the daughter of a forest witch, a rumor she doesn’t try to dispel: she spends half her time in the woods with a pet hawk, picking herbs and fungi for her poultices and potions. And just to emphasize that she is at one with nature, we are treated to a shot that has become familiar in recent years: the one in which the camera points to the sky through a frame of rustling treetops. Meanwhile, Will is in his attic, scribbling the first draft of Romeo and Juliet, so it’s clear from the opening scenes that Hamnet is not going to be an exact film.

Buckley gives a very Buckley performance. Like many of her characters, Agnes is a fierce rebel who is more honest than everyone else around her. Naturally, the nervous Will is quickly impressed, and stammers, “I wish I could fast my hand to you.” It’s a warm and sweet romantic story, but it’s not particularly believable. The newlywed Shakespeares live an idyllic, picture-postcard life with their daughter Susannah and their adorable twins Hamnet (Jacoby Jopp) and Judith (Olivia Lenz). (One conceit of the film is that the twins are uncanny alike, so it’s a shame the actors don’t resemble each other at all.) Stratford-upon-Avon is strangely lacking in other houses and other people. The contrived conversations include quotes from Shakespeare’s plays and explanations of situations that everyone in the scene already knows. Will’s bullying father tells him he’s useless on two separate occasions (and the second time, Will grabs him by the chin and slams him against the wall, like Mescal’s character in Normal People did to his girlfriend’s brother, but louder).