{"id":230438,"date":"2026-01-13T00:42:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-13T00:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/230438\/"},"modified":"2026-01-13T00:42:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T00:42:09","slug":"hamnet-won-big-at-the-golden-globes-so-how-good-is-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/230438\/","title":{"rendered":"Hamnet won big at the Golden Globes, so how good is it?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sarah<\/p>\n

Review by<\/p>\n

Sarah Watt<\/a><\/p>\n

Film reviewer\u00b7New Zealand Listener\u00b7<\/p>\n

12 Jan, 2026 11:30 PM3 mins to read<\/p>\n

Sarah reviewed for the Sunday Star Times until 2019. After a career change to secondary school teaching, she now she works in alternative education with our most disadvantaged rangatahi.<\/p>\n

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Jessie Buckley stars as Agnes and Paul Mescal as William Shakespeare in Hament. Buckley shines as Bard\u2019s wife in tale of grief inspiring great art while Mescal makes a wonderful Shakespeare for the 21st century. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

Hamnet, directed by Chlo\u00e9 Zhao, is in cinemas from Thursday, January 15.<\/p>\n

This extraordinarily moving and at times exhilarating film about the most famous name in theatre shows that cinematic storytelling isn\u2019t dead yet. <\/p>\n

\n It\u2019s the sublimely acted and beautifully photographed adaptation of Maggie O\u2019Farrell\u2019s 2020 novel Hamnet, a
\n fictional musing on the real-life marriage of William Shakespeare and Anne \u201cAgnes\u201d Hathaway and, in particular, their young son, here posited as the inspiration for the play Hamlet.\n <\/p>\n

Jessie Buckley (The Lost Daughter) is breathtaking as free-spirit Agnes \u2013 a historically accurate alternative name for Shakespeare\u2019s wife \u2013 a self-possessed young woman who feels at one with the earthy mysteries of the forest but on the outer of her father\u2019s stepfamily. <\/p>\n

She captures the eye and heart of a young tutor named Will (Paul Mescal), and their passionate and deeply enmeshed relationship as portrayed by these two superlative young Irish actors is utterly captivating.<\/p>\n

Mescal makes a wonderful Bard for the 21st century: here, the literary genius is portrayed as loving, loyal but intellectually tortured, extinguishing the smeared memory of Joseph Fiennes\u2019 playboy playwright from 1998\u2019s Shakespeare in Love. <\/p>\n

In Hamnet, the angle is not that Shakespeare spent months away in London for romantic kicks, but juggling pursuit of a career while desperately missing his family back in Stratford. <\/p>\n

And it\u2019s in this family, held together by Buckley\u2019s extraordinary strong-willed Agnes with the marvellous Emily Watson as her mother-in-law, that the film\u2019s action takes place, as the women strive to keep three beloved children alive. <\/p>\n

Set in a time in England when about a third of all children died by age 10, a sense of foreboding hangs over the story even if you don\u2019t know the family history. <\/p>\n

As the plague sweeps through the country, Will watches ghoulish puppet shows on London streets while Agnes concocts natural remedies to protect her vulnerable young from the pestilence \u2013 until a terrible and unexpected tragedy changes the course of literary history.<\/p>\n

Chinese-born director Chlo\u00e9 Zhao won an Oscar for Nomadland, which had Frances McDormand acting with non-actors as a woman forging a peripatetic life in 21st-century America. <\/p>\n

Zhao\u2019s effortless switch to this scripted period drama with well-known historical underpinnings is stunning, particularly given her acknowledgement that much of the Shakespearean dialogue (a chunk of the story depicts a Globe production of Hamlet) was beyond her comprehension. <\/p>\n

Rating out of five: \u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605<\/p>\n

To read Sarah Watt\u2019s review of the Golden Globes other big winner One Battle After Another go here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Copy LinkEmailFacebookTwitter\/XLinkedInReddit<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Review by Sarah Watt Film reviewer\u00b7New Zealand Listener\u00b7 12 Jan, 2026 11:30 PM3 mins to read Sarah reviewed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230439,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[1975,8834,137231,13182,37637,156,71,136399,23834,6101,3630,221,185,702,68199,409,111,139,69,17509,223,28050,26756,72037],"class_list":{"0":"post-230438","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-at","9":"tag-big","10":"tag-chlo","11":"tag-cinemas","12":"tag-directed","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-from","15":"tag-globes","16":"tag-golden","17":"tag-good","18":"tag-hamnet","19":"tag-how","20":"tag-is","21":"tag-it","22":"tag-january","23":"tag-movies","24":"tag-new-zealand","25":"tag-newzealand","26":"tag-nz","27":"tag-so","28":"tag-the","29":"tag-thursday","30":"tag-won","31":"tag-zhao"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}