Chloe Zhao’s ambitious homage to grief and love, Hamnet, is more than just a Shakespearean tragedy. The matriarchal exemplar of regenerative creativity realigns our wavering sense of reverence back towards women and the natural world.
Released in the latter end of 2025, Hamnet, starring Jessie Buckley (The Lost Daughter, 2021) and Paul Mescal (Aftersun, 2022), revives William Shakespeare’s titular Hamlet and reimagines the experiences of passion and sorrow in the personal lives of those behind the play's conception. Focusing on the death of Shakespeare’s son Hamnet, the film is adapted from the 2020 novel of the same name by Maggie O’Farrell, speculating the impact of grief upon Shakespeare (Mescal) and his family. Set primarily in the rural countryside of Stratford Upon Avon far from the grimy streets of 16th Century London where Shakespeare made his name, we are instead placed in the world of Agnes (Buckley), his wife. Zhao’s most unfeigned picture yet sweeps you into an incredibly moving tale about the universal human experiences that mould art, reminding us that it is the artist’s purpose to connect and console.
In Hamnet, we are granted a much anticipated and complex gaze into the lives of Shakespeare's ‘forgotten’ family. Often regarded as a historical enigma, Shakespeare’s works are known so thoroughly that it seems absurd historians know very little about his own biography, much of which is presumed based on his fictional works. Mescal’s performance brings depth to such a momentous figure, reminding us of not only the brilliance of Shakespeare’s mind, but also his heart. Yet this depth is merely the surface of who Buckley embodies in Agnes, who is passionate and unmoveable in both her grief and love. With this Zhao teaches her audience a lesson in the wisdom of nature innate to women. She does this so effectively in her nurturing of Agnes that the prolific impact of Shakespeare or rather the over-indulged age-old narrative of male ambition and intellectual enlightenment is forgotten. As his counterpart, Agnes is grounded, animalistic and intensely strong in her sense of self. Witch-like in her unconventional approach to motherhood, she is deeply connected to her natural surroundings and is herself, a powerful force of nature. Zhao hones in on the experience of motherhood and recontextualises the domestic sphere as a simple and primordial place where the cycles of pain and devotion play out, perhaps even where women gate-keep a form of wisdom untouched by men.
While Agnes sits comfortably in a place of knowing, Shakespeare must venture out into the world to write, learn and create so that he can meet her at her level. Zhao divinely honours this feminine power, a sentiment that supporting performances such as Bartholemew Hathaway, Agnes’ brother (Joe Alwyn) and Mary Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s mother (Emily Watson) also encapsulate. Bartholemew’s dedication to his sister is wholesome and subtly feminist, he cares for her and values her needs, comfortable as patriarch of his father’s estate. Mary Shakespeare, who has also suffered the loss of children, juxtaposes Agnes, as she surrenders to the facts of life by suppressing her pain, whilst Agnes cries out like a bear and refuses to accept her fate.
Hamnet encapsulates a tipping point in British Imperialism’s shift towards urbanisation and the abandonment of nature’s wisdom. Subtextually, Zhao is eco-feminist, which is a concept best explored by Vandana Shiva, who posits that "the marginalization of women and the destruction of biodiversity go hand in hand". The pillaging of natural resources is symptomatic of the same colonial and patriarchal violence imposed upon women and marginalised peoples. Chloe Zhao is one of only 3 women (and the only of colour) to have won an Oscar for Best Director, she achieved this for Nomadland (2020)—and is nominated again for Hamnet, a film that diverts from the undeniable patricentrism of the Academy and Hollywood. Zhao imbues her work with eco-feminist wisdom perhaps rooted in her own Chinese heritage, emerging from a rich cultural legacy of spiritual healing practices grounded in the individual’s body. On set, she encouraged her actors to dance after filming intense scenes so that their emotions didn't “solidify”, and ran meditations to ensure a light and tranquil environment whilst developing a film with such impactful themes. In the mise-en-scene, she used colour symbolism coinciding with the Hindu/Buddhist Chakras to signify aspects of her characters. Shakespeare dressed in blue for the throat Chakra associated with the arts and intellect and Agnes wore red for the heart and base Chakra representing love and passion. This also amplified her boldness and became a beautiful and intricate way in which Zhao could navigate both the fictional and realist aspects of the narrative.
Furthermore, Agnes works alongside her natural surroundings, a focal point in the cinematography of Hamnet. She uses naturopathic herbal medicines to treat her children and is implied to possess psychic abilities that allow her to foresee her future. She even gives birth to her first child in solitude among a beloved tree. Her hand healing and breathing practices are intentional depictions of Qi (Chi) balancing in Chinese philosophies, believing that all living beings are composed of vital and flowing energy. To me she also echoes the wisdom of the Ngangkari healers of Central Australia, as well as alludes to Celtic/pagan rituals and herbalism associated with Buckley’s own Irish heritage. Zhao blurs together global Indigenous wisdom, blending and honouring Eastern and Western holistic philosophies through the matriarchal symbol of Agnes. In her own caring creative practice, Zhao provides her actors with a safe space where both the women and child actors can bloom. Jacobi and Noah Jupe, actor brothers who play Hamnet and Hamlet (acting in Shakespeare’s play) respectively are not only excellently cast, but convey a wisdom and emotional maturity beyond their years in their portrayal of death and innocence. In a climatic scene in which Agnes views Hamlet at the Globe Theatre, she reaches out her hands to the dying Hamlet and releases her grief and rage directed at the distant Shakespeare, absent in his son’s death who watches on from behind the curtains. This is a moment for the audience (fictional and literal), all spluttering in tearful understanding of such a beautiful ode to the history of cinema and theatre’s ability to connect us all. With this, Zhao provides us with a truly rare gift of a union between human activity and place—most distinctly nature and our emotional subconscious, once again illuminating ancient matriarchal wisdom we are at risk of losing.
Criticised by The Independent for being overly tragic and an “emotionally manipulative,”... “fan fiction”. I argue that views such as this are misogynistic attacks that gravely misunderstand the film and regrettably demonstrate what we are seeing globally; a fraying connection to our sensitivity, our emotional core, our humanity. Hamnet instead portrays raw and embodied emotional release, representing how grief and human existence is grounded in the natural world, which honours women and all beings. The film, as a piece of regenerative art imbued with Zhao’s eco-feminist ethos, beckons us to return to how we used to live, exist and practice, to decomplicate the tangles of our intellect and to simply ground ourselves through meditation, through connection to others: family and the people we hold close and of course to nature. Zhao teaches us that we must reconcile with Indigenous wisdom, and return to mother nature so that we may heal, renew, endure and re-ignite our lost values.