'Hamnet' suffers from too much weeping

William Shakespeare wouldn't be wowed by this domestic drama about his home life back in Stratford-upon-Avon. Where's the action? The wit? The wordplay?

- AMY NICHOLSON FILM CRITIC

AGATA GRZYBOWSKA Focus Features

JESSIE BUCKLEY as Agnes and Paul Mescal as Will Shakespeare in "Hamnet."

The great playwright’s skill is hard to match. Instead, “Hamnet,” directed by Oscar winner Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland”), uses our curiosity about the Bard to spin a soggy story about love and grief with enough tears to flood the river Thames. Co-written by Zhao and Maggie O'Farrell, this tonally faithful adaptation of O’Farrell’s florid 2020 novel of the same name stars Paul Mescal as Will—the name he goes by here —and Jessie Buckley as his wife, Agnes, pronounced Ahn-yes, although the real person was more commonly called Anne Hathaway. The 16th century’s fondness for treating Agnes/Anne and Hamnet/Hamlet as interchangeable versions of the same name is part of the plot and must be endured.

The tale is set during the years that Will launched his career in London, missed being at the deathbed of one of his children and funneled his guilt and sorrow into theater’s most prestigious ghost story.

Mostly, however, we're stuck at home with Agnes, who spends half the film weeping.

“There are many different ways to cry,” wrote O'Farrell, whose book goes on to list several variations. (The novel is overripe with descriptors, rarely using one word when a paragraph will do.) Buckley's wet and wild performance shows us each of them — “the sudden outpouring of tears, the deep racking sobs, the soundless and endless leaking of water from the eyes” — plus a few others I'll call the disgorged caterwaul, the furious scrunch and the chuckle swallowed into a choke.

“Hamnet’ is my least favorite of Buckley’s showcase roles (I loved “The Lost Daughter”), but the dampness of it has pundits wagering she'll finally get her Academy Award.