Films that adapt William Shakespeare’s work focus on staying true to his words that changed literature forever. Hamnet, adapted from the novel of the same name by Maggie O’Farrell, focuses on a fictionalized story of what inspired Shakespeare to write what would become his most celebrated work. Directed by Chloé Zhao in 2024, the film doesn’t treat Shakespeare as a genius to be admired. The film treats him as a father and husband who processes grief in a different way from his wife, and a man who makes his pain into public art.
At the heart of the film stands Agnes, who completely takes over the story. While Shakespeare builds his reputation in London, Agnes stays behind in Stratford and raises their children, runs the household, and holds the family together. She is unconventional and deeply connected to the world around her in ways that other people in her life barely understand. When tragedy strikes her family, Agnes’s grief is not quiet. She carries it openly and visibly. Jessie Buckley plays the character with complete dedication, and every scene with her feels alive and real. Agnes is not a supporting character in her husband’s story: She is the story.
Shakespeare processes grief entirely differently. He pushes himself into work, into his plays, into one place he feels most in control. Where Agnes expresses her grief loudly, he channels it into his work. He pushes his actors in London to great lengths as a way to process. He distances himself from his wife and daughter and from the full weight of what they went through. The gap between them after the tragedy is not loud. It is quiet, two people carrying weights that pull them further apart rather than toward each other.
The film’s most powerful connection is between the family’s loss and the writing of Hamlet. Shakespeare does not tell Agnes that he is writing the play from their grief. She only finds out after she is told by her stepmother. She travels to London to find the performance that brings out their pain on stage. It is one of the most devastating scenes from the film. Agnes does not react with comfort or gratitude. She is confronted with the fact that her husband found a way to preserve what they lost, but did it alone, without her permission, and into something that is celebrated and public. The play serves as an eternal memorial to their grief.
Visually, Hamnet is a striking movie set in the English countryside. Zhao uses the English countryside as an extension to Agnes’s feelings. Wide open fields and dense forests reflect Agnes’s isolation, her connection to nature, and the distance between her and Shakespeare in London.
Zhao and cinematographer Łukasz Żal shoot the film with long and unhurried shots that grip the audience. There is no rush in the camera as it captures the little things like light through trees and other quiet details. This patience is intentional, as grief does not move quickly.
The contrast between Agnes’ world and Shakespeare’s world are also drastically different. His London is dark, enclosed, lit by candles, and crowded. Her Stratford is open, green, alive, and inviting. Zhao uses the divide to express how they are working through their grief and how their surroundings reflect their emotions. One of them is surrounded by people but still feels alone. The other is isolated and still rooted in anguish.
In the end, Hamnet is not a film about Shakespeare’s genius or legacy. It is about two people carrying a shared loss in different ways and how the world around them reflects back as a result. The audience won’t be able to look away from that divide when Zhao’s camera is on. Her ability to capture a fictionalized history of a well-beloved playwright is what makes this film feel less like a story and more like a life actually lived.
