Chloé Zhao‘s Hamnet is the kind of movie that makes you emotional while you’re watching, the type that doesn’t eat away at you but that makes your emotions bubble to the surface in the best, most cathartic way. But it’s also the kind of movie that stays with you, its message knocking around in your brain long after you’ve walked out of the movie theater.
Those things would be enough to make Hamnet an early contender for Best Picture at next year’s Academy Awards. But when combined with flawless, spirited directing and two powerhouse performances from Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal, it feels like Hamnet will not just be in the conversation; this might just be the winner.
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It feels absurdly early to say this, but the movie, which examines the family life of one of literature’s biggest names, William Shakespeare, and connects the tragic loss of his 11-year-old son, Hamnet, to one of his most famous plays, Hamlet, just won the TIFF People’s Choice Award, a very good measure for future success. But whether the movie ends up as successful come awards season as it feels like it will be now, one thing is undeniable: it’s a movie that will touch you deeply.
Hamnet isn’t a story of grief, though it is. It isn’t a story of family, though it also is that. It’s not even a story about the power of, well, stories… but it is that too. Instead, Hamnet is an experience, one that mixes together all these feelings and grounds a figure that feels as mythical as Shakespeare in the commonplace. He isn’t us, but he could be, because Zhao brings him back to Earth and makes his pain our pain, his catharsis our catharsis.
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I watched a fair bit of movies in several different movie theaters while at TIFF. Hamnet was not just my favorite, it was the only one that had me not just silently and bravely crying, but weeping. There were multiple moments where I had to rush to dry my tears because I didn’t want to miss a moment. The funny part is that this was a shared experience, I could see and hear how the entire theater was reacting the same way as I was. And when the movie ended, even on a screening with no Q&A and no actors present, no one moved and everyone cheered as absolutely every one of the names appeared onscreen.
But the biggest cheer went to Jessie Buckley, who plays Agnes. Engrave her Oscar now, Buckley is breathtaking as a woman who will not comform to society’s expectations, a woman in love, and later a mother in pain. Every second of her performance is both ethereal and out of this world and so grounded that you can feel everything she’s feeling. She’s not just believable as the character, she’s believable as the embodiment of each emotion, and that’s the difference between a good performance and a brilliant one.
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In William Shakespeare’s day, the names Hamlet and Hamnet were interchangeable. That’s all you need to know to understand what this story is about. The res is pure feeling. Hamnet is not just a movie made to win awards, which is precisely why it feels like it will. Instead, it’s a movie that moves at the right pace for you to feel part of it, even for a story about the Bard and one of his most famous creations.
Hamnet screened at the Toronto International Film Festival.
