Hamnet Review
A couple days back I was able to see one of the early Oscar front runners. And a movie that people have been calling one of the best of the year, Hamnet. What did I think about this movie? Is it any good? Let’s talk about it!
The Good
The language being used to describe this movie is that it’s one of the most emotional and devastating movies of the year. I wasn’t really sure how much I would agree with that because I’m not somebody who gets super emotional watching a movie. I’ll say this, Hamnet is one of the most emotional and gut wrenching movies of the year. If you don’t know what this movie is about, it’s based on the story of how William Shakespeare came up with the idea of Hamlet. If you don’t know where this story goes and what happens I’d keep it that way. This is a brutal watch that has some of the most gut wrenching scenes and sequences of the entire year. People weren’t crying out loud and sobbing but you could tell that people in the theater were an emotional mess watching this movie. That’s just the power of great storytelling and great characters that you can feel these big emotions. My mom, a former high school English teacher, taught Shakespeare throughout her teaching career. She’s interested in this movie and was asking if I’d see it again with her. I said I would but I need to wait a bit, I need some to process this movie.
So much of the reason why the film is so emotional and so devastating is because the performances all around are pretty fantastic. Our two leads of the movie are Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal. These are names that you’ve likely been hearing during the awards season and will continue to hear in the coming months. Both of them are delivering top notch performances, two of the best of the year. They’re performances that require a lot from them. Throughout the movie they’re having to play these characters expressing very different emotions. Where you get them as parents that love and care for their children and are a happy family. But as the movie gets more gut wrenching they’re having to transition in how they’re playing the parents. It’s not just that they’re world class actors and actresses giving great performances, it’s that they’re giving great performances that are also layered and having to do so much. Both Buckley and Mescal are 100% deserving of the nominations they’ve been receiving. Buckley seems to be the front runner for the best actress category. We’ll see if she wins and if she does I’m not going to complain about it. The other standouts to talk about here are the child actors or the younger actors. In particular with Jacobi Jupe as Hamnet, the son of Buckley and Mescal’s character. This is one of the best child performances I’ve seen in a long time. He’s up there with Macculary Culkin in Home Alone for the best. In a lot of ways, it’s probably a better performance because he’s having to emote so much. He has so many of the emotional scenes and if he wasn’t giving a top notch performance and you didn’t buy into it, then the whole movie wouldn’t have worked. The emotional gut punch value of it wouldn’t be there. I know because he’s a kid he likely wouldn’t be in the supporting actor conversation but he 100% deserves to be. The other good one here is Noah Jupe, Jacobi’s older brother. He’s only in the last third of the movie but he’s really good in the movie. He’s delivering a great performance and another one that’s very layered and so believable. All around, this is one of the best ensembles of the year.
Related to the characters there’s something interesting the movie does in how they treat their characters and make you reevaluate things as the movie goes along. In particular with Paul Mescal’s character, who’s playing William Shakespeare. There’s multiple moments in the first half of the movie especially related to the family tragedy where William keeps on making poor decisions that leave you frustrated. As the movie goes along you better understand why he’s making these choices. It uses the audience’s knowledge of Shakespeare’s work to misinform the audience about things. It makes you reinterrupt Shakespeare’s work, in particular with Hamlet. I’ve never been a big Shakespeare guy. The only time I’ve ever read or talked about his plays is school assignments. But this movie makes me want to watch Hamlet again with the knowledge I have from this movie. It was very cleverly done in ways that I wasn’t expecting and added layers to the film.
Another aspect of the movie that works so well is the score by Max Richter. I didn’t know his name prior to this movie. I looked at his career and he has scored movies that I’ve seen and/or heard of, notably Ad Astra. This is one of the best scores of the year that elevates every scene that it’s in. The score feels like a character in the movie and has a presence throughout. It’s been getting some awards nominations here and there and they’re all once again deserving. It swells with the emotions of the movie and plays at just the right moments to make you feel something. The moment where this is most prevalent is the ending when the film is in its final moments. There’s this moment with Jessie Buckley’s character looking at another character and the score plays and it croshendos so nicely and ends the movie on this very powerful note. The score got in at the Golden Globes and Critics Choice, it got shortlisted at the Oscars. I’m so happy about that, because this is one of the year’s best scores and deserves all of the praise it’s getting.
Finally, the movie does a really good job of putting you in the past. Everything from the costume and production design are fantastic and makes you feel like you’re going into the past. All of the technical aspects of the movie that we’ve talked about work really well and fit the spirit and the vibe of the movie so well. If the costumes weren’t top notch or if the production design wasn’t fantastic and you didn’t believe that we were in the past, then it would’ve taken you out of the movie. Even some of the ways that the costumes look and how the colors standout tie into the themes and the story of the film nicely. I’m currently taking some film classes and we talk a lot about how the costumes and the look of the film can really add detail to the scenes. Hamnet is sort of a perfect example of that, where the costume that Jessie Buckley wears throughout the film carries more weight in the third act of the film.
The Bad
This isn’t the type of movie that I typically gravitate towards. This is one of those end of the year movies that I’m only watching because it’s a front runner at the Oscars and other awards shows. But a dark depressing movie about William Shakespeare’s story about writing Hamlet isn’t something that interests me. Chloé Zhao is a very talented director. I like Eternals more than most people. But it’s a film that’s very polarizing. A lot of people (including my dad) don’t like that movie. The types of movies she makes are darker and more mature, which means they aren’t the most rewatchable. I think that’s the aspect that’s capping how much I can actually watch and enjoy this movie. It’s an emotional movie that gets a lot of things right but at the end of the day, I don’t know the context in which I’ll rewatch this movie. Saying this as a negative is almost the film’s biggest positive as I’m praising that it’s doing such a good job at what it’s trying to be, but because it’s doing that, it’s not a movie that I want to rewatch and explore again. I’ll probably watch this movie again with my mom in the future, but if it wasn’t for her or somebody else that wants to rewatch, I wouldn’t choose to rewatch it.
Also I think the pacing of the movie is a bit off in the movie. The film rushes some things in the first half of the movie and then it has longer scenes and moments in the second half, it makes the film’s pacing a bit weird. The film rushes to get our two leads together and have them fall in love. Once that happens the film slows down and we spend more time with the family and building out the dynamics. But because it rushes things in the first half, I don’t feel like I fully understand what made these two characters fall in love. Especially when their romance is such a big part in the back half of the film I think the first half needed to spend more time on the romance and not rush them together as quickly as possible. The film is only 2 hours and 5 minutes long, so I think by adding 5-10 minutes you’re still watching a movie that’s shorter than most of the other Oscar contenders this year and in the past years.
Final Thoughts: Hamnet is a very solid movie and one of the most memorable of 2025. It’s not the most rewatchable film of the year but that’s ok because the things it was going for and trying to get right, it does. Our two lead performances by Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal are fantastic. When the movie is this big emotional journey it really works and tugs at the heart strings. It’s deserving of several of the awards nominations it’s been getting, you’ll see this movie a lot come Oscar nominations morning.
The Score: 8.8/10 (B+)
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