Stately Shakespeare drama finds an emotional flourish

Maggie O'Farrell's lauded 2020 novel, Hamnet, is a dense and lyrical imagining of the lives of William Shakespeare's family, full of interior thought and lush descriptions of the physical world.

- Richard Lawson

It would seem, upon reading, near impossible to adapt into a film. Or, at least, a film worthy of O'Farrell's so finely woven sensory spell. Film-maker Chloé Zhao has attempted to do so anyway, and the result is a stately, occasionally lugubrious drama whose closing minutes are among the most poignant in recent memory.

Zhao is a good fit for the material. But she has not made anything as traditionally tailored and refined as this. The humbler dimensions of her films The Rider and Nomadland are missed here; Hamnet too often gives off the effortful hum of prestige awards-bait.