HAMNET_REVIEW
We seem to be living through an unexpected renaissance of literary classics on screen: Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, Dracula, and now Hamnet. Watching this film reminded me why I fell in love with cinema and theatre in the first place, long before I shifted my studies toward communications. It’s worth noting that Hamnet is directed by Chloé Zhao, one of only three women ever to win the Oscar for Best Director, and adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s novel, itself a reimagining of the few biographical traces left from Shakespeare at the time he wrote what may be his greatest tragedy, Hamlet. Yet the film wisely avoids centering Shakespeare, instead it turns its gaze toward his wife, Agnes/Anne Hathaway.
But what struck me most goes beyond literary adaptation. While sometimes it truly feels to me as though we’re witnessing a slow disintegration of the world around us. Modern forms of fascism thrive on indifference: political, social, emotional. They depend on people who no longer allow themselves to be affected, who shrink their circuits of feeling until nothing truly touches them. In that sense, Hamnet hit me hard. I cried more than once, especially during the final ten minutes, and the heavy silence in the theater mixed with sobs told me I wasn’t the only one. Those closing moments are, for me, the film’s true peak, not because they offer catharsis, but because they recontextualize everything that came before. They open a space to consider the many ways we move through grief, love, and the lingering echoes of emotion, here retracted as the loss of a family member, and how art in any matrix can truly heal us, as individuals, but perhaps more importantly us in the broader sense, as a collective.
For sure not an awards‑bait kind of movie, it’s far too sincere for that. Thoughtfully directed and quietly devastating, Hamnet draws its power from restraint, mythic resonance, and a final act that stays with you long after the credits fade. It reminded me of the simple, human act of telling and listening to stories, and how narrative is one of the ways we reorganize ourselves, rebuild connection, and resist fragmentation. In moments when the world feels like it’s coming apart, investing in a good story might be one of the few things that still holds us together.
/feb26