Hamnet (2025)
Directed by Chloé Zhao
The powerful story of love and loss that inspired the creation of Shakespeare's timeless masterpiece, Hamlet.
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27 films that influenced Hamnet
What critics say influenced Hamnet
…contrived in a “Shakespeare in Love” sort of way…
Some of these have been highly fictitious, such as the brilliant "Shakespeare in Love," which earned multiple Academy Awards…
This is not Shakespeare in Love redux.
…movies about William Shakespeare (whether his life or something less straightforward than that [e.g., Shakespeare in Love, which focuses on what, fictionally speaking, inspired him to write Romeo & Juliet]) have become part of their own genre…
Although there are some thematic similarities with Shakespeare in Love, with the Bard getting ideas that we recognise from his theatrical work, this is a far more testing and upsetting film…
Chloe Zhao's Hamnet is a kind of flip side to Shakespeare in Love.
His eventual turn to Hamlet as a vessel for mourning is rendered not as triumph but as an act of survival.
As Shakespeare’s Hamlet reminds us, “When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.”
…the devastating inspiration behind Hamlet…
Zhao doesn't lean too heavily on the author's various Shakespearean references outside of the oft speculated idea that the bard's most famous play, 'Hamlet,' was inspired by the death of his son, the names Hamlet and Hamnet being interchangeable in the late 16th century.
…the writing and preforming of “Hamlet” is an epiphany for both William and Agnes, in that it meets mortality head-on, from the mourning of a loved one, to the effects of loss on those left behind and the fear of, “what dreams may come” in “that undiscovered country, from whose bourn / No traveller returns.”
…culminating in the creation and first performance of Shakespeare’s Hamlet: a tribute born from heartbreak and enduring love.
It’s an approach that becomes overwhelming well before the family is devastated by tragedy, and contrasts markedly with the more quiet melancholy running through The Rider and Nomadland.
While “Nomadland” (2020) explored the lonely world of travelling outcasts, “Hamnet” has a supposed forest-witch child at the centre.
In her Oscar-winning third feature, Nomadland (2020), she attempts to bridge the gap between docudrama and straightforward fiction through the casting of a major star (Frances McDormand as Fern).
In so many of her rustic works like The Rider and Nomadland…
…and as in Nomadland, the use of preexisting music for certain key scenes is a fantastic choice…
Oscar-winner Chloe Zhao proved herself a master of powerful imagery framing human questing and connection in NOMADLAND, and brings those gifts to this tale as well…
See Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet for another example of exactly that.
“Sentimental Value” is more realistic and nuanced than the glossy “Jay Kelly” (2025) or primal pre-Raphaelite “Hamnet” (2025) while somehow being more optimistic.
…feels of a piece with a more tragic tale of art and family like Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet…
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Max Richter’s score is slightly dented by the use of his own “On the Nature of Daylight” – already used to similar effect in Arrival (2016), Shutter Island (2010), and The Last of Us (2023).
His score has been overused to emotional death in films like “Arrival” and TV shows like “The Leftovers.”
…most famously used in Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival, where it all but swallowed Jóhann Jóhannsson’s score…
…musical score (Max Richter, Arrival)…
…a sparse but effective score from composer Max Richter (Arrival, The Leftovers)…
It’s an approach that becomes overwhelming well before the family is devastated by tragedy, and contrasts markedly with the more quiet melancholy running through The Rider and Nomadland.
In so many of her rustic works like The Rider and Nomadland…
“Hamnet” lacks the quiet, subtle pitch of “The Rider” and the Oscar-winning “Nomadland,”…
…adapted for the screen by the author alongside director Chloé Zhao (The Rider, 2017; Nomadland, 2020)…
Zhao’s early films (Songs My Brothers Taught Me, The Rider, Nomadland) were all motivated by people living on the margins…
I did go back and watch her movie The Rider, which I actually liked more than Nomadland!
ORDINARY PEOPLE, THE BIG CHILL, and GHOST were just three films that were studies of characters searching for answers to their grieving…
…from The Shining to Heartburn, audiences will be familiar with the ultimate horror that anyone can endure, that of finding themselves married to a writer.
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ORDINARY PEOPLE, THE BIG CHILL, and GHOST were just three films that were studies of characters searching for answers to their grieving…
…from The Shining to Heartburn, audiences will be familiar with the ultimate horror that anyone can endure, that of finding themselves married to a writer.