Hamnet

A few years ago I read comedian Rob Delaney's memoir A Heart that Works, which is about him losing his two year old son to brain cancer. It is a remarkable memoir--slim, darkly funny, filled with rage at the unfairness of life as well as the love only a parent could know. I recommend it to everyone. Most people say they will never read it because it sounds unbearably sad. That makes me sad because Rob Delaney wrote it for people to read. He wrote it to achieve personal catharsis and to make meaning of the senseless death of a beloved child and he wrote it for you: to let you know about Henry, his child, but also to prepare you in case it happens to you. And it will happen, if you live long enough. Maybe not to your child, I hope to God not. But definitely to your parents, should you live long enough. To your spouse, maybe. To your friends. To be alive and have relationships is to ultimately grieve. And to grieve is a privilege because it means that you have loved ones worth grieving.

Director Chloe Zhao's adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's book (which I have not read yet) is a miraculous film that is pure and raw and uncomplicated and unpretentious. It tells the story of Agnes (Jessie Buckley), the daughter of a "wise woman"--a woman with medicinal herb knowledge and also what I would call "extra-natural" knowledge (she can see people's futures by holding their hands). Agnes' mother dies when Agnes is young and she inherits these abilities.

One day, she meets a Latin tutor, Will (Paul Mescal), and the two fall in love. They know their families will not approve a marriage, so Agnes gets pregnant by Will on purpose to force their families' hands. They are wed and have a daughter, Susanna. Some years later, Agnes has two more children: twins, a boy and a girl. The son, Hamnet, is born strong. The girl, Judith, almost dies upon birth but Agnes manages to revive her and vows to protect her throughout her life.

Will is unsatisfied with life in the country. He is a writer and desperately needs to get the world in his head out on paper. Agnes encourages him to move to London and join the theatre community there. For many years, they live separate lives with Agnes raising the kids outside Stratford and Will living and writing in London.

But tragedy comes. The plague whispers its way through the city and into the country and Judith contracts it. Agnes fights with all her medicine knowledge to heal her. But it is Hamnet who ultimately saves Judith: he crawls in bed with her and tells her they will switch places so that Death will be fooled and take him instead. His gambit works: Judith recovers and Hamnet dies in his mother's arms.

After the loss of Hamnet, Agnes is depressed as any mother would be. She is resentful of Will living in London even after he buys the family the largest house in Stratford. Agnes isn't the kind of woman who cares about big houses and fancy things. In fact, she would rather stay in the house where Hamnet died to be close to the spirit of her child.

But little does Agnes know that her husband is grieving in his own way. He has written a play as a tribute to his lost son. A play in which the hero, Hamlet, is a powerful man of honor who is haunted by the ghost of his dead father. Agnes and her brother Bartholomew (Joe Alwyn) travel to watch the play. At first, Agnes is infuriated, not understanding what the play is about or why these actors are profaning her dead child's name by speaking it onstage. But when the actor playing Hamlet (Noah Jupe, the brother of Jacobi Jupe, who plays Hamnet in the film, a lovely casting decision), comes onstage, Agnes is filled with amazement. This handsome young man is her son, given life by her husband. 

The final scene of the film is one for the ages. If you're familiar with the play, you know that Hamlet dies. He comes to the front of the stage after having purposefully downed poison wine that killed his mother. He gives his final soliloquy to the audience and holds out his hand, which Agnes takes. "The rest is silence" he says. As the character Hamlet dies, Agnes sees a vision of her son, looking confused and scared and then seeing his mother...and no longer being afraid. The boy walks into the darkness behind the stage and Agnes smiles and laughs for the first time since her son's death. In watching her husband's play, she has achieved catharsis. She can let her son go, knowing that he knows she is smiling at him, remembering him, and loving him always.

Hamnet is a film that will make you cry, but it's not devastating. It's life-giving. Because it knows that our loved ones live on in our memories and in the art we create in their honor. Films about grief and death don't have to be crushing because death is just another part of the life cycle and it's one we will all experience. I think the character of Agnes, a woman deeply in touch with nature, is the perfect character to guide viewers through the experience of losing a child. 

Hamnet is a deeply female film. The director is a woman. It's based on a book written by a woman. It's about a witchy woman and motherhood. Motherhood is shown to be a force of nature, not a charming domestic attribute. Motherhood expands Agnes, it doesn't reduce her. Feminine power is shown to be much larger than home and hearth: it expands into nature, as well as into the past and future. Femaleness is not small and pretty in Hamnet: it is enormous and gorgeous and terrifying as it ought to be. As it is. Men try to reduce us because they fear us, as they fear all of nature.

Agnes is the main character in a film that also has Will Shakespeare in it. This is not a movie about Shakespeare and his experience writing the play Hamlet, this is a movie about Agnes Shakespeare and her experience in watching the play Hamlet. And Jessie Buckley deserves an Oscar. 

It's refreshing to watch a film that is not trying to be clever or break the mold and show us something "new" about grief. Grief is timeless and there is nothing new to be shown. Instead, we have a film that is not cynical. It's honest, it's clean, it's like a spring of pure, cold water. And it's one of the best movies of 2025. 

Go see it.

Grade: A+

Also, a fun little thing about this movie is that if the score in the final scene sounds familiar, it's because it was also used in episode 3 of The Last of Us. It's such a powerful piece of music by Max Richter, it's been used multiple times in scenes of grief.