Writer/director Chloé Zhao won her Oscar for the 2020 film Nomadland, but there’s always going to be an asterisk next to any film that won anything in 2020, because, well, it was 2020. I wasn’t Nomadland’s biggest fan, but it was abundantly clear Zhao was the kind of filmmaker where one of her films would eventually land for me the way Nomadland did for most people. Her latest film Hamnet, an adaptation of the Maggie O’Farrell novel, premiered earlier this year at the Telluride Film Festival to a similar kind of acclaim. And whenever there’s a movie like this that is obviously going to be a strong awards season player, I try not to learn much about it beforehand because one, I like to go into every movie as cold as I can, and two, hype like that can be detrimental to the experience you have when you finally see the movie. However, sometimes hype is warranted. 

Hamnet follows the love story of William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and Agnes (Jessie Buckley). We follow their early romance, their marriage, and the births of their three children. Suddenly, one of their children becomes very ill and dies. This sends the two into an agonizing and painful journey of grief, a journey that ultimately inspired Shakespeare’s greatest masterpiece.

I fully expected Hamnet to be emotionally manipulative, and it is, but don’t underestimate what can happen when emotional manipulation works. The script and the performances took me by surprise emotionally in a number of ways and I think that’s what justifies the manufactured emotional response. I say that and yet, I was fully in tears no fewer than four times over the course of this film’s two hours. It’s emotionally exhausting yet incredibly effective, and ultimately this is an achingly beautiful story about love, grief and the healing power of art. Part of that is due to the warmth and empathy in Zhao’s storytelling, but it’s got more to do with our two central performances.

Everything everyone has said about those performances is true, Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal will absolutely rip your heart out. But they rip your heart out in ways that might be less predictable than you’re expecting. They don’t say the name William Shakespeare until the film is almost over, and at that point you’ve almost forgotten that’s the story being told. This could be about any couple and the universality of that is one of the strongest aspects of this film. The emotional journey Buckley and Mescal take the viewer on is extremely precise and deeply felt. Buckley’s performance is strong and passionate, and Mescal can’t help but be dashing and charming, even when he’s breaking your heart. If these performances were not on this level, it’s very possible the emotional heft of this story would come across all wrong, but neither Buckley nor Mescal ever hit a false note.

In our supporting cast, we have Emily Watson as Mary, William’s mother and Agnes’ awful mother in law. Watson is given one note to play and that’s it, basically. We also have Joe Alwyn as Agnes’ brother, and I didn’t find a lot that stood out to me about his performance. The performances from child actors Noah and Jacobi Jupe are what really stands out here. It’s always baffling to me when child actors can find this kind of depth and emotional honesty in acting performances. It’s like they must understand something critical about the human condition that might be elusive to people decades older than them. Jacobi Jupe, in particular, finds ways into this role that transcend familiar tragic child performance tropes. It’s rare and increasingly surprising when child actors seem to be on the same level of their adult costars, so it must be pointed out when it happens. 

Chloé Zhao’s filmmaking is once again atmospheric and evocative of its time and place in immersive and captivating ways. The pacing is slightly slow and languid, but once you settle in for what this story is going to give you, the pacing becomes more of a point in the film’s favor. Cinematographer Łukasz Żal, who previously worked on The Zone of Interest and Cold War, shot Hamnet, and the look of the film is consistently striking and vivid. Fiona Crombie, who has previously worked with Yorgos Lanthimos and Ari Aster, is Zhao’s production designer, and she does an effective job of plunging the viewer into this world immediately. I can’t say a lot about the score or the costume design really stood out to me.

More than anything, Chloé Zhao wants to hook the viewer emotionally and reduce them to tears, and it’s clear she knows how. Hamnet is the kind of film where if one thing doesn’t get you, there are another ten things around the corner that might. Does Hamnet live up to the impossible hype surrounding the reaction from the year’s festivals? I think it does, but that’s also because I tried to limit my expectations going into the film. I’m not sure how this will play for Shakespeare aficionados or fans of the Maggie O’Farrell novel, as I am neither. And if you’re expecting this to give you a lot of great insight about Shakespeare’s creative process, the film might not be giving you what you want from it. But as a love story about how art can heal, I found Hamnet to be incredibly moving.