Rating: ★★★​​★★

Directed by Chloé Zhao

Starring Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Joe Alwyn, Jacobi Jupe, Noah Jupe

Rated PG-13

Release Date: Nov. 26

“To be, or not to be, that is the question.” 

– William Shakespeare, “Hamlet”

In a globe-like theater, skin-and-bone spectators sonically blend, extending their arms to a boy on stage dressed in purest blue. Their fingertips brush his tattered armor, longing to be touched by his piercing talons of faith. He looks back, looking them in the eye. Hush. A momentary flicker in his eye of familiarity, promise, and then hope. A sudden flutter of wings.

Yet, it is not to be. The young soldier bids “adieu” to the kneeling crowd below. Memory of what was “to be” enraptures the audience’s mind just as a candle guides its holder down the twisting corridors of history and time. What is his name, you ask? It is Hamnet, historically interchangeable with Hamlet, a name with Old German and French roots that translates to “home.”

Directed by Academy Award-winning director Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland,” “Eternals”), “Hamnet” is based on the bestselling novel of the same name by Maggie O’Farrell. Here, I attempt to convey its universality, though my words are inevitably insufficient.

The film delves into the generational love between William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and his wife Anne “Agnes” Hathaway (Jessie Buckley), which culminates in the birth of their three children: Susana (Bodhi Rae Breathnach) and fraternal twins Judith (Olivia Lynes) and Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe). The children each embody their parents’ beauty and magical eccentricity, conjuring up an innate wisdom and complementary inclination for the abstract. Hamnet, their only son, possesses distinct bravery and fortitude. His dream is to become a protector of his family, just like Hathaway, and act like a swordfighter against darkness, similar to Shakespeare. 

However, as fate would have it, his dreams never come to fruition. The bubonic plague arrives on the shores of a late-16th century England, and the boy falls ill and does not recover. An epidemic of guilt and grief befalls the house as the once-fearless couple grapples with the brevity of life, an inevitable truth that we all face. Their story speaks conclusively to the transcendence of shared art through death, which is illustrated by Shakespeare’s creation of the play “Hamlet” — arguably the playwright’s magnum opus.

Take this rave review and the multitude of others seriously: Buckley is a craftswoman at her finest, a genesis of novel artistic power. She commands the story, changing your perception of a mother’s love for her child in the process. At the film’s climax, her onscreen presence quite literally cracks any composure that you had left. Buckley’s tour de force as Hathaway epitomizes an Academy Award-winning performance. 

As Shakespeare himself, Mescal is a master at play: It is clear that he left no stone unturned in bringing the 500-year-old playwright’s life-altering trauma to the big screen. With this performance of a lifetime, the “Normal People” and “Gladiator II” actor definitely cemented his place among Hollywood’s next generation of male stars.

If the soul is a phoenix, Zhao burns it to dust and resurrects it by the end of her take on the tragedy. As soon as the film opens, a subtly powerful spirit grips the audience and lifts it on eagle’s wings for the entire run time. Through silence and masterful close-up shots, she drives your catharsis and builds it toward the film’s definitive climax, one which destroys your emotional safety and reawakens an evolutionary impulse toward empathy. Once that point hits, you are utterly broken — the auteur holds your open heart in her palm. Perched in a darkly lit enclave for two hours, I was left with eyes wide open, heart pounding with the trauma just passed to me, and contemplative of love and life.

Zhao’s direction informs viewers of her perspective on the world, which draws inspiration from nature and its inhabitants. She sees rooted treetops as peacekeepers of the forest, representing Hathaway’s role as the mother of her children, and enrolls Hamnet as a bluebird clinging to its nesting branches until it must fly away. She understands how life-stopping grief is and how each person deals with the loss of love in different ways. In the end, Zhao closes the film on a hopeful note that memory can live on, beautifully and eternally, through art that is universally identifiable.

The story’s end also proves that, although our physical bodies are born to die, our spiritual memories are born “to be.” Hamnet’s spectral presence after death shows that our love and our dreams live on with endless possibility. Our passed loved ones fly over the earth in a ghostly form, continually transforming and reinvigorating us through endless guidance and revelation. They inspire crowds to unify and collectively reach for their alluring, bluish light.

“Hamnet” ultimately coerces the viewer to focus on these characters’ journeys, making the transformative experience entirely captivating and inescapable. The tragedy of losing a child — and likewise, the hope for them to live on and pursue greatness — disrupts peaceful hearts and transforms the human spirit. Hamnet himself represents an unfulfilled promise, the calamity of a young soul’s potential laid to rest too early and the tragedies that run rampant in any famed dynasty. You realize, as Shakespeare’s mother puts forth in the film, that whatever is given can easily be taken away. 

Remembrance is all that remains. Goodbye, sweet prince.

“The rest, is silence.”

– William Shakespeare, “Hamlet”