TIFF 2025 | “Hamnet” follows a couple as they grow into a family only to suffer a devastating loss that forces them to confront the question of how to move on
“Hamnet” is devastating, but what makes it so powerful is that it is about the living—and what keeps us living. It’s our memories. It’s our art. It’s our stories. It’s our culture. They are why as we leave some behind we persist through grief. Through a vivid dreamlike vision, Chloe Zhao tackles the mysticism and lyricism of a family confronting loss with power and empthy. A cinematic masterpiece.
Hamnet is playing at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.
“Hamnet” may be about a death, but what makes it so powerful is that it is about the living—and what keeps us living. In the face of a devastating loss, two parents have to find a way to go on. Writer-director Chloe Zhao, adapting Maggie O’Farrell’s novel of the same name, has an answer for them. It’s our memories. It’s our art. It’s our stories. It’s our culture. It is these pieces of our history and humanity that push us to persist through the pain of grief as we leave some behind. Not in spite of the loss, but in honor of it. To mourn is to remember. And to remember is to love. And “Hamnet” will be remembered as one of the best movies of the decade.
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Adapting the novel was no easy task. While the story is simple, there’s a quiet mysticism and lyricism that ebbs and flows to create a tapestry of the family at its center. Not to mention, the Shakespeare of it all. It’s an atmosphere not easily captured on film. Zhao and cinematographer Łukasz Żal allow each frame to speak for the characters. They allow each image to carry all the interiority and emotionality of the characters. When William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal, “Aftersun“) and Agnes (Jessie Buckley, “I’m Thinking of Ending Things“) meet, it is like a force is driving them together. With few words and gentle touches, the magnitude of their connection is understood and will eventually drive them to marry.
There is a dreamlike quality to the early scenes of “Hamnet.” As we watch William and Agnes grow up out of their families—they both never quite fit in with them anyway—and into their own just the two of them, it’s like we’re watching a prophecy fulfilled in front of us. And in a way, Agnes, who we learn is rumored to be the daughter of a forest witch, has a certainty to her life through an ability to see a person’s true nature (and future) by holding a person’s hand between the thumb and index finger.
Zhao allows the story to unfold without urgency. Vivid visuals and crisp sound carry us through William and Agnes’s lives as they move into their own house, get married, and have children—Susanna and twins Judith and Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe). Warmth and joy are emanating from the screen, especially thanks to Buckley’s performance, which makes Agnes feel like a character with a past and future and Mescal who allows William’s interior genius to show on the surface. All is well until it isn’t.
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Like its namesake play, “Hamnet” is a tragedy. However, because the movie takes its time building this family before our eyes, the death doesn’t simply feel like a piece of a story. It feels like a tragedy happening to us, like we are being robbed of our time with these people. Their loss is our loss. And like all grief, the rest plays in fits and starts as William disappears and Agnes performs the machinations of everyday life, filled with sadness, anger, and questioning. But that isn’t the story’s main focus.
Instead, it strives to give the family and us, the audience, catharsis. In its stunning final act, we watch the story of “Hamnet” transform into the tale we’ve known for centuries. Except now, we have its intention. We can see the grief, anger, and questioning that we watched this family suffer. But we can also see the joy and time that they lost being reclaimed and enshrined in a story that we’re still telling today. That is the magnificent part of “Hamnet” and what makes it a masterpiece. It is cinema as therapy. It holds up a mirror to the audience and asks, “to be or not to be.” And the answer is clear.
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Hey! I’m Karl. You can find me on Twitter and Letterboxd. I’m also a Tomatometer-approved critic.
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