TELLURIDE – Let us tell you a tale of passion, joy, death, and despair. A story of a young Latin tutor who falls madly in love with the daughter of a witch from the woods. The star-crossed lovers marry against their families’ wishes, but eventually bring three beaming children into the world. It is a beautiful life until a tragedy, only a spirit of death could foster, is bestowed upon them. That is the Shakespearean fable at the center of Chloe Zhao’s “Hamnet,” a world premiere at the 2025 Telluride Film Festival and the welcome return of an accomplished auteur.
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This story begins with Agnes (Jessie Buckley), not your typical young woman living in 1580s England. When William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal), the Latin tutor in question, witnesses her falconry skills in the nearby woods, he’s instantly smitten. Granted, he’d heard nasty things about this brown-haired beauty in the nearby village, but Agnes is well aware of her “witch of the woods” reputation and laughs off their ignorance. And, to be fair, her mother and her mother’s mother also had a special connection to the lush English forests and the healing powers of nature. There is a slightly mystical ambiance around Agnes (which Zhao leans on enticingly) that William is fascinated by, and they soon fall deeply in love.
When Agnes becomes pregnant, William’s parents, Mary and John (Emily Watson and David Wilmot), are skeptical of her intentions, but Agnes’ compassionate brother Barthelomew (Joe Alwyn) helps broker a financial arrangement that allows the pair to marry. Agnes moves into the Shakespeare family home, where she initially locks horns with Mary and William’s resentment over assisting in his father’s leather-crafting business festers.
However, this movie is about “the” legendary William Shakespeare, and we witness how his initial lust for Agnes inspires ideas for “Romeo and Juliet,” much to Agnes’ dismay, he spends late nights frustrated over putting his ideas to paper. But this is not the Shakespeare biopic story you might expect. It’s an adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s celebrated, imaginary novel of he same name. And there’s a big emphasis on imaginary. O’Farrell, who co-wrote the screenplay with Zhao, was sparked by how, over the centuries, few historians connected the life of William’s son Hamnet with the eventual masterwork, “Hamlet.” Especially as the names were considered interchangeable at the time.
Needing to spread his wings, William eventually leaves Agnes to try and make it to London as a playwright while his growing brood remains in the English countryside. As their flock expands to include his eldest daughter, Susanna (Bodhi Rae Breathnach) and twins Judith (Olivia Lynes) and Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe), and William becomes more successful, he tries to convince Agnes to move everyone to London, but to no avail. She always has an excuse, but it’s that otherworldly connection to the woods that makes her hesitate. Her love for William is strong, but in Zhao and O’Farrell’s interpretation of historical events, Agnes does not seem to realize how popular or important her husband has become.
After a segue to big-screen blockbusters with the underrated “Eternals” (we’ll die on that island happily), Zhao is back to the expressionistic and realistic aesthetic that captivated in her previous films “Songs My Mother Taught Me,” “The Rider,” and “Nomadland.” Except, with a bit of a twist. World-building has become a bit of a dirty word in cinema circles these days, but it’s inherent to Zhao’s vision of late 16th-century England. You have to believe someone as inherently independent as Agnes would not have been discarded to a mental asylum. Or that even a creative mind such as William’s would be this comfortable with his wife’s almost pagan teaching methods. Zhao pulls that off not only by setting the film’s non-traditional tone almost immediately, but by pulling incredibly grounded and visceral turns from her actors.
It’s not an exaggeration whatsoever to recognize that Zhao has found a way for the already talented Buckley and Mescal to pull their performances from the utter depths of their bones. The emotional release by these two actors is often arresting and akin to a dramatic faucet being unleashed on a wildfire. In the wrong hands, these moments could ring false and forced. Zhao, Buckley, and Mescal don’t know the meaning of those words. Their scenes together are often breathtaking. And both Watson and the 12-year-old Jupe have their own moments of glory.
Objectively, this level of affecting projection will not be for everyone. Some may find it too overwhelming, too intense for a 2-hour film, but that does not diminish Zhao’s undeniable brilliance. And what Buckley pulls off in both of Agnes’ birth scenes is so soul-breaking it’s almost undescribable. But collaborating with her cast, cinematographer Łukasz Żal, and composer Max Richter, who delivers a film score that will make you tear up on its own, Zhao has fashioned a masterwork that, once again, straddles the line between narrative and cinematic art in a manner few of her contemporaries can match.
But despite some stellar sequences throughout the entire film, Zhao saves her gut-punch for the final act. There are two moments in the last ten minutes of “Hamnet” that may stick with you for months on end. And just when you think that’s it, the film ends on one last image of Buckley that borders on the precipice of exhilaration. Welcome back, Chloe Zhao. We missed you. [A-]
“Hamnet’ opens in limited release on Nov. 27
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