SGIFF 2025: Chloé Zhao Reframes a Shakespearean Narrative With ‘Hamnet’

History will tell you that behind every great man there is a great woman. History will also tell you about the same woman burned at the stake for daring to grasp that greatness. The stories of Ida B. Wells, Diane Nash, or even Greta Thunberg make a captivating case in point. Go back a few generations, and you will find Anne “Agnes” Hathaway engulfed in the flames. Despite the threadbare findings, following centuries of scholars poking and prodding into the life of William Shakespeare, the one prevailing theory is that she was a wicked woman. They said she trapped him into a loveless marriage and caused him to flee to London. Hamnet determines to debunk this myth.

In the Oscar-tipped drama, based on Maggie O’Farrell’s novel of the same name, Chloé Zhao pulls focus away from the celebrated poet and places it squarely on his wife. She riffs on the unfavourable opinion of the masses and gives Agnes the agency to reclaim her narrative. The “child of a forest witch” in this reality is a woman with profound knowledge of herbal remedies and medicinal potions. She is someone whose connection to nature informs her delicate disposition.

Agnes is the quiet engine of her family. When her husband’s growing restlessness threatens the household’s sense of balance, she selflessly sends him off to London, nudging him onto the path of a playwright he longs to be. She then takes on the burden of raising their three children on her own in Stratford. This dynamic, however, deteriorates when their son dies from the plague. Their shared sorrow soon becomes the seed of Shakespeare’s tragedy, Hamlet.

Grief and its unbearable gravity lie staunchly at the heart of Hamnet. It speaks of the power it wields in connecting and disconnecting us. The feelings of guilt, resentment, and loneliness thicken with every passing minute. The film, however, refuses us a scapegoat, as reconciliation in the face of such tragedy here appears differently to different characters. Hamnet, despite its Elizabethan setting, reads acutely contemporary.

Much of this can be credited to Zhao’s directorial sensibilities. She, whose past works are often underpinned by the human-nature connection, instinctively fulfils what the source material demands. The sprawling greenery that Agnes curls herself in intertwines with the raw emotions bursting through the screen. Adding colour to her outline is Łukasz Żal’s haunting, painterly cinematography and Max Richter’s lush soundscape.

The emotional weight of Hamnet wouldn’t have landed the way it did without Jessie Buckley’s bravura performance. Agnes, in her nimble hands, is soft with compassion and hardens as her story goes along. Buckley tears the screen with every guttural keening, inflicting her pain on those who can only watch, as she grapples with her despair. Jacobi Jupe’s portrayal of the titular role, tender in its innocence, delivers the film’s emotional blow.

Hamnet, in essence, is a whisper of a soliloquy into a world unknown. It is the epiphany that presents itself once we look past the gloss of something untouchable. Zhao, refusing to take Hamlet at face value, lays bare what might hide underneath. What transpires is a reminder of beauty that emerges from the ruins of tragedy—something that eludes the Enthusiasm Society of Late Fame, another Singapore Film Festival standout.

Rating: 9/10