{"id":80595,"date":"2026-06-26T09:39:46","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T01:39:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/?p=80595"},"modified":"2026-06-26T09:39:46","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T01:39:46","slug":"hamnet-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/?p=80595","title":{"rendered":"Hamnet (2025)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It continues to astound me how perfectly Chlo\u00e9 Zhao grasps the tenets of Western culture despite being Chinese. What could be more central to the canon of Western culture than William Shakespeare? Adapted from a recent novel, this film further takes the bold step of not placing the playwright nor his plays at its center but instead Shakespeare’s wife and children. The result is a stupendously creative reimagining of what the plays might mean and one of the most emotionally affecting film I’ve seen in a while.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

In the town of Stratford, Agnes loves spending her days in the forest with her hawk. William Shakespeare catches sight of her when he is tutoring students to repay his father’s debt. He is instantly smitten and Agnes returns his feelings. William’s mother warns that Agnes was born of a forest witch but the two get married anyway when Agnes becomes pregnant. Despite being a good husband and father, William becomes dissastified with life in Stratford and so goes to London to seek his fortunes with Agnes’ blessing. In time they have three children together while William builds a career in the theatre. He returns occasionally to spend time with Agnes and the three children but Agnes keeps putting off going to London herself. She is particularly worried about the health of Judith, the twin of Hamnet, who suffars from ill health. One day the young girl seemingly contracts the plague. Agnes writes to William to ask him to return while Hamnet insists on staying at the side of his twin sister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film makes a point of not mentioning Shakespeare’s name until the climactic scene but anyone sitting down to watch this could hardly miss what and who it is really about. It is bold how resolute it is at keeping the focus squarely on Agnes. We learn little of Shakespeare himself here. His is apparently a leatherworking family and we see him struggling with writing something but we are not told what it is. Instead what we get here is a magical portrait of life in 16th century rural England. There is wonder in nature and a hole in the roots of a large tree feels like a portal into the underworld. The Old English charm that Agnes recites has a lyrical feeling to it that is both familiar and eerie. In the days before modern medicine, life is precarious and it feels as if a child’s life could be snuffed out at any moment. This is of course a fictionalized adaptation but one could easily imagine that these influences shaped Shakespeare in writing his plays. Ultimately this is a film about the grief of losing a child and framing Hamlet the play as the legendary playwright expressing his emotions and immortalizing his son is beautifully conceived and executed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It struck me that this is exactly the kind of magical wonder that the Sandman <\/em><\/a>series tried so hard to evoke. The second season passed by unremarked probably due to Neil Gaiman’s besmirched reputation but it was also only mediocre at best. Simply naming a character Death and putting her in black clothing quickly feels underwhelming. Here we have Death as it should be, a palpable, overwhelmingly terrifying presence precisely due how suddenly and unexpectedly life can be snatched away by the plague. The prophetic visions that Agnes claims to have and the little charms she recites are all ways to cope with having so little power over their lives and the world they live in. The visuals are gorgeous and Zhao is confident enough to let her images speak for themselves without the need to overexplain. When we see the forbidding hole in the base of the tree, reflected later in the set for Hamlet, we know exactly what it implies. The same works when Shakespeare is walking through the streets of London and stops to watch a shadow puppet show. The use of music too is masterful. There is none at all for much of the beginning and then it creeps up on you and is all-encompassing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of all, this film demonstrates a rich understanding of the time that Shakespeare lived in, what life was like, how that feeds into the plays that he wrote and how it might have been received by audiences at the time. It quotes the original lines of the play from Hamlet to wonderful effect, giving new meaning to the familiar words. It is an incredible film on every level and it still surprises me that it is a director who was born and raised in China who was able to realize such a quintessentially Western vision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It continues to astound me how perfectly Chlo\u00e9 Zhao grasps the tenets of Western culture despite being Chinese. What could be more central to the canon of Western culture than William Shakespeare? Adapted from a recent novel, this film further takes the bold step of not placing the playwright nor his plays at its center … Continue reading Hamnet (2025)<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=80595"}],"version-history":[{"count":57,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80675,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80595\/revisions\/80675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=80595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=80595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}