The 52nd Telluride Film Festival is barely more than a day old and already there is a strong theme running through the new films here: art as a life altering experience. In Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, depression causes the superstar musician to go deep into his writing and recording a new album in order to find his true self. In Jay Kelly, George Clooney plays a mega movie star who takes a detour from his career in order to discover what has passed him by in his personal life. And now in Hamnet Chloe Zhao navigates how love and death collide at the intersection of William Shakespeare’s greatest play.
It’s a powerful argument all around about how the human experiences can transform into art and storytelling , and it is front and center in these films, with Hamnet perhaps being the most vivid example of them all. Based on Maggie O’Farrell’s award winning novel, it is a fictional idea -albeit one steeped in research – that the death of Will Shakespeare’s 11 year old son, Hamlet directly metamorphisized into a key theme in his play Hamlet . Although there is little solid evidence of it by those who study this kind of thing, the timing indicates the writing and production of the play coincided with this dark moment in Shakespeare’s life and became a way to channel his grief into his writing.
Zhao’s film is first a love story, then one of family, then one of deep pain and conflict, and finally one of relief and hope. It tells the tale of Agnes (Jessie Buckley) , a free spirited lover of nature and wilderness with a wild child streak who basically is a bit of an outcast except by her farmer brother Bartholomew (Joe Alwyn), when one day Will Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) comes into her life and a passionate, somewhat forbidden affair commences, much to the objections of his stern parents, John (David Wilmot) and the very religious Mary (Emily Watson). Nevertheless they get married, have three kids, Susannah (Bohdi Rae Breathnatch), Judith (Olivia Lynes), and Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe). As the years pass Will finds himself frequently going away to London from their Stratford-On-Avon home in order to pursue his playwriting and producing dreams, while Agnes is left with the kids. Things really get tense when the plague intervenes and Judith gets gravely ill, an event where loving brother attempts to somehow transfer his own health to her to bring her back from the brink. However it happened she does respond but it is at the cost of his own life.
This devastates the family, and no question absent father Will who is distraught when he arrives back to the house and finds his only son has died. Agnes lashes out at him for not being there when it counted, and the rift in their marriage has never been so clear. He throws himself back into his work, a new play Agnes had thought was a comedy but it turns out to be called “The Tragedy Of Hamlet” and it is anything but funny. The death of his son Hamlet ( a title card on the film explains the name Hamlet is another way of saying Hamlet) has directly affected the creation of this dark story with so much death at its center, and a ghostly presence that becomes its spiritual core. But can it bring Will and Agnes back to where they once were?
What Zhao, who also co-wrote the screen adaptation with O’Farrell, has accomplished here is nothing short of emotionally devastating by the time it reaches the opening performance of the play with a still bereft Agnes front and center with her brother but expecting something entirely different than what Will has quietly transformed on to the stage at the Old Globe. What ensues becomes the film’s undisputed highlight, a punch to the gut that will leave you shaken as well as in tears.
Buckley, who can do no wrong, is sensational and the beating heart of the story as a young woman who ran free and marched to her own drummer, but who became a fiercely protective and devoted mother. Her life had been as much a marriage to nature as it was to Will, and the birth of their first child, Susannah, with Agnes alone in a deep hole outdoors is a memorable and stunning scene to say the least. Her fierce and unleashed emotional range is gut wrenching. Mescal is equally very fine as the world’s most famous playwright, but this is a side of the Bard we have never seen and the actor brings deep unleashed power to his performance, especially in the staging of Hamlet. Jupe is a sunny presence as Hamlet, so charming and fun we miss him all the more after his tragic death. In a nifty bit of casting Jacobi’s older acting brother Noah Jupe, now all grown up, is terrific in the title role of the Hamlet production.
Technically the film is exceptional with stunning cinematography by Lukasz Zal, whether it is those candlelit interiors or wide outdoors. The production design from Fiona Crombie is right on, as is the subtle use of Max Richter’s lilting score.
After winning Oscars for Nomadland, and then trying a big budget Marvel movie to show her versatility, Hamnet, with its quiet determination to say much about how art is affected by life is unlike anything else and proof she is just about as good a filmmaker as any working today. Hamnet, with its two stars and director achieving new heights of their talents, knocked me out.
Producers are Liza Marshall, Pippa Harris, Nicolas Gonda, Sam Mendes and Steven Spielberg
Title: Hamnet
Festival: Telluride Film Festival
Distributor: Focus Features
Release Date: November 27, 2025
Director: Chloe Zhao
Screenplay: Chloe Zhao and Maggie O’Farrell
Cast: Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson, Joe Alwyn, David Wilmot, Bohdi Rae Breathnatch, Olivia Lynes, Jacobi Jupe, Noah Jupe
Running Time: 2 hours and 5 minutes
