Ivan Webster doesn't just review a film; he dissects the alchemy of grief, arguing that Hamnet succeeds not by explaining history, but by visualizing the terrifying silence between a father's ambition and a child's death. In a landscape of biopics obsessed with career milestones, Webster finds value in a story that treats the creation of Hamlet as a desperate act of imposition against a chaotic world.
The Architecture of Grief
Webster immediately challenges the standard biographical approach, noting that "Four centuries of performance and scholarship have teased out meanings from every word of Shakespeare's. Yet very little is known about this master dramatist." Instead of filling these gaps with dry facts, the film leans into the speculative power of Maggie O'Farrell's novel, focusing on the 1596 death of Shakespeare's son. Webster observes that the script takes a "bold" leap by linking this specific tragedy to the playwright's magnum opus, even if the three-to-five-year gap between the boy's death and the play's composition is compressed for narrative flow.
This compression works because, as Webster argues, "How does anyone process grief? An artist can drop a quarrel from last week or a memory from decades ago into his work and make it feel essential." The film's genius lies in its refusal to treat the timeline as a rigid constraint, instead prioritizing the emotional truth of the creative impulse. This aligns with historical context where the names "Hamnet" and "Hamlet" were interchangeable in Elizabethan England, a detail the film uses to make the son's name reverberate through the play's title.
"What held me and moved me here was precisely the constant visual uncertainty. Will's life was nothing like a play. It was stalked by out-of-nowhere tragedy."
The narrative centers on Agnes, played by Jessie Buckley, who is portrayed not as a passive wife but as a "deeply loving yet profoundly fierce" force of nature. Webster highlights her connection to the natural world, noting she is "most at ease in the forest, steeped in knowledge of herbs and plant life." This characterization draws a sharp contrast to the urban ambition of her husband, Will. While Will is often associated with the Globe Theatre and the "ribald" city life of London, the film deliberately keeps those intoxications "hover just out of reach," focusing instead on the "plain country tale" where the family's soul is nourished.
Critics might note that centering the narrative so heavily on Agnes risks romanticizing the "woodland witch" rumors that historically surrounded Anne Hathaway, potentially overshadowing the complex social realities of a woman in Stratford. However, Webster suggests this framing is necessary to show how "earthly passions" fueled the art.
The Cost of Creation
The emotional core of the piece arrives with the depiction of the plague. Webster describes a scene where the young Hamnet, played by Jacobi Jupe, "coaxes the deadly fever out of his sister and moves it to himself. He dies." It is a moment of "stunning" supernatural intervention that leaves the mother "furiously unforgiving" when Will returns too late. "You weren't here," she rages. This accusation sets the stage for the film's most audacious sequence: the first performance of Hamlet.
Webster praises the director, Chloé Zhao, for her decision to show Will rehearsing the young actors, goading them with the command, "Again . . . again . . . again." This moment serves a dual purpose: it showcases Paul Mescal's performance as a volatile artist and bridges the gap between the father's grief and the son's memory. When Agnes finally sees the play, she is initially "outraged to hear her son's name uttered before a teeming, uncaring crowd," but the performance sweeps her up in its anguish. The film closes the circle when Will himself portrays the Ghost, a role scholars believe Shakespeare actually played, allowing the parents' grief to finally join.
"It matters less whether O'Farrell and Zhao are clever at speculating. It's fundamental that they let art assert itself for all of us to see how fragile, life-dependent, its making can be."
The visual language supports this emotional arc. Webster notes Zhao's reliance on the "middle shot," forcing the audience to scan the frame to grasp the stakes, and the use of candlelight that catches actors in "expectancy, waiting for a revelation that available light wasn't yet revealing." This technique mirrors the historical reality that Shakespeare, though formidably well-read, was "never in the least constrained" by formal education, his mind "darting, and ravishingly given to wide, wild imagining."
Bottom Line
Webster's review is a masterclass in appreciating art as an act of survival, arguing that Hamnet is less about historical accuracy and more about the "artistic manifesto" of turning personal devastation into universal truth. While the film's speculative leap from a boy's death to a global masterpiece is "just barely" plausible, it succeeds because it captures the chaotic, non-linear nature of how creators impose order on a world that offers none. The strongest element is the film's refusal to separate the artist from the family he left behind, proving that the greatest plays are often born from the deepest silences.
"It's fundamental that they let art assert itself for all of us to see how fragile, life-dependent, its making can be."
The biggest vulnerability remains the historical ambiguity of the connection between Hamnet and Hamlet, yet the film transcends this by focusing on the emotional necessity of the link rather than the factual proof. For the busy listener, this piece offers a reminder that the most enduring art often emerges not from a place of control, but from the desperate need to make sense of loss.