"Hament" Review: When Grief Becomes A Beautifully Framed Dead End.

After dabbling in the world of superheroes, Oscar-winning director Chloe Zhao returns to the awards circuit with “Hamnet” from Focus Features.

I have never been much of a fan of her work—she tends to confuse solemnity with depth and patience with insight—but I will grant her this: she has flair. She knows how to place a body in a landscape, how to let wind and light do the heavy lifting, and how to make misery look ravishing. Unfortunately, in this film, that flair becomes a decorative veil draped over a narrative that mistakes emotional exhaustion for emotional truth.

Adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s novel, “Hamnet” centers on Agnes and her husband, who are grieving the death of their young son in plague-ravaged 16th-century England. It is a premise weighed down by historical resonance and intimate tragedy. Yet, Zhao approaches it as if grief were a museum exhibit—something to be gazed at reverently, never interrogated. The film moves slowly, deliberately, and ultimately numbly, as if daring the audience to confuse endurance with engagement.

Zhao’s signature visual lyricism is present from the opening frames: Agnes sleeping among the roots of a tree, framed like a pagan relic, already embalmed by symbolism. Here, nature is not revelatory but relentlessly emphatic. Every leaf rustles with meaning, and every silence is prolonged to the point of discomfort. What begins as atmospheric soon hardens into affectation. The film doesn’t invite us into grief; it traps us inside an aestheticized fog of it.

Jessie Buckley, who plays Agnes, commits fully—almost recklessly—to her performance. She howls, stiffens, withdraws, and endures with such intensity that the character becomes less of a woman than a vessel for suffering. There is little modulation and little sense of inner contradiction. Paul Mescal’s portrayal of Shakespeare, meanwhile, retreats into passivity, his absence framed as emotional cowardice rather than human complexity. Zhao seems uninterested in the marriage as a relationship; it exists merely as a fault line along which grief can be theatrically divided.

The film’s much-touted culmination at the debut of “Hamlet” should be shattering. Instead, it feels programmatic—grief is neatly folded into art, and symbolism is underlined in red. Zhao seeks catharsis without mess and transcendence without ambiguity. Death is not questioned here; it is curated.

“Hamnet” is a beautiful dirge that never risks discord. It insists on its importance, seriousness, and pain—yet leaves us curiously untouched. Zhao’s flair is undeniable, but flair alone cannot substitute for insight. Grief, like art, needs air to breathe; this film suffocates it.

Final Grade: C+

“Hamnet” is in theaters now.