Hamnet (2025) - A Deceptive Film.

Hamnet (2025)

Chloé Zhao has always been one of my favorite filmmakers. With "Nomadland" she completely won me over. A simple visual approach that contained a universal cynicism and solitude. One of those films far ahead of the Academy Awards that still managed to break through the mainstream barrier and win a large number of statuettes. A decaying journey in search of the inner self. "Hamnet" had intrigued me from the very beginning. Putting Shakespeare’s work aside for a moment, it had all the right ingredients to draw me in. An excellent cast (led by two Irish giants like Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley), a director I adore, and a fascinating setting. Moreover, months ago I was already hearing whispers from the far West calling the film an incredible emotional masterpiece made of tears and heartbreak. Well, what can I say, I have rarely felt more misled. The story has a strange structure. It feels like a work built in sealed compartments: the first portion, heavily unbalanced, very quickly explores the relationship between the two main characters. Their falling in love, their union.

Which is right, absolutely right, but the other two portions of the film want to completely shift the focus away from them and concentrate on the children. That could work if it were a subplot or a secondary layer of the film. Instead, with almost no groundwork beyond the title, it becomes the only existing plot. A sudden jolt that destabilizes the viewer and leaves them disoriented for the rest of the story. On several occasions I found myself wondering what the true message of the film was, because the screenplay is not able to communicate it at all, neither through text nor subtext. Only in the finale did I fully grasp Zhao’s vision, and I must say it is not what I expected from her. Is this really the same filmmaker who wrote, edited and directed "Nomadland"? There, the emotional construction was extraordinary from beginning to end, with perfectly crafted character development. Here, it feels as if only in the final moments she remembered the film’s core theme and decided to bet everything on it, in a sense betraying the narrative grammar established in the previous hours. In that final theatre section the film tries at all costs to force the audience to cry and feel moved, and I found it depressing and extremely simplistic. Yes, the ending is emotional, but for Christ’s sake the rest of the film is almost nonexistent flatness made of Malickian echoes and little more. It felt very much like a Shakespearean reinterpretation of "A Hidden Life", only weaker, less poetic and more…digital, and I say this because even the cinematography is nothing special, digitally flat. In Malick’s films Nature plays a truly essential role, here it becomes only a small device, a kind of magical object used by Buckley’s character in a few scenes. That's it. It does not create a sense of universal unity with the characters or a confrontation with human Nature. It is merely a mannerist tool inserted to distract the eye from the film’s flatness. A failed attempt to make it appear deeper than it actually is. This narrative weakness is then carried forward, and I say this with a broken heart, by Paul Mescal. 

This is the second film after "Gladiator II" in which I do not see at all the talent of the Irish actor who gave us some of the most visceral performances in recent cinema in works like "Aftersun" and "Normal People". Here, he is flat, subdued, restrained. It feels as if he is trying to release emotion through every micro expression of his body but cannot, remaining trapped inside his massive physicality. I do not know whether this is due to the high budget Hollywood production or Zhao’s direction, but his Shakespeare is an extremely weak character about whom very little is said, and what little is said is communicated in a banal and superficial way. He truly performed in a restrained manner, perhaps once again to recover in the finale, but you do not make a film just to give your best at the end. One scene, one sequence does not save a film, quite the opposite. It only reminds us of the wasted potential and distorts it to the core. It destroys the very idea of the film and turns it into an Instagram product designed to generate social media discourse. It is no coincidence that there are countless reels showing the final scene with "On the Nature of Daylight" by composer Max Richter, used and overused in at least five other films. And the rest of the movie? It is not there. It almost feels as if that overwhelming tear jerking climax was engineered to go viral on TikTok, and judging by the audience response, it worked perfectly.

The other actors are all fantastic, starting with Buckley, who will surely go home with a statuette this year. I loved her performance, although in hindsight I cannot help but notice the forced confrontation with grief imposed on the spectator in almost every scene in which her character appears. A bit calculated and convenient, but here is the truth: "Hamnet" is a clever film, perfectly packaged for the Academy, a journey through pain designed to move and pity and nothing more. Made to measure to provoke tears and pity, at the expense of everything else, especially the story.

I hope Chloé Zhao is aware of these significant (personal) narrative flaws and comes back stronger than ever with a film that doesn’t try to make you cry but leads you there.
Step by step, beat by beat, scene by scene. From beginning to end.
Oh, almost forgot, Jacobi Jupe is the true standout of the film, every sequence with him is prohibitively excellent. I’m expecting great things from him, and I’m looking forward to Mescal’s return more eagerly than ever.