![](\"https:\/\/cdn.theatlantic.com\/thumbor\/sbOccqmf9RH4NtYg-PD03ahr8Ro=\/0x0:2000x1125\/960x540\/media\/img\/mt\/2025\/12\/2025_12_8_Hamnet_1\/original.jpg\")
Nomadland<\/span><\/i> director, Chlo\u00e9 Zhao, has returned to the Academy\u2019s radar with her film, <\/span>Hamnet,<\/span><\/i> receiving eight total Oscar nominations \u2014 including Best Picture of 2026. During my time with the SBIFF, I have attended almost every Best Picture nominee screening at the Arlington Theater, and <\/span>Hamnet<\/span><\/i> was one of them. When I first arrived at the theater I was met with one of the longest lines I have ever seen at a cinema, and was worried I wouldn\u2019t be able to make it inside; my patience did prevail, and I am ambivalent to whether it was a single bit worth it in the end.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nZhao and Maggie O\u2019Farrel\u2019s screenwriting was dramatically aided by performances from Jessie Buckley and Jacobi Jupe \u2014 not so much Paul Mescal \u2014 who play the mother and son known as Agnes and Hamnet. Buckley is raw and guttural with her acting, portraying resentment in almost an animalistic character of its own, while Jupe portrays the innocence of young, growing, life being crushed by responsibility larger than itself with amazing emotional agility and strength. Mescal, on the other hand, is the tortured artist that is William Shakespeare, whose performance doesn\u2019t go further than a depressive shell, covering the true vulnerability of a man using his grief as a means for the creation of his commonly believed magnum opus, <\/span>Hamlet.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n A quote is the first thing we see from this film, one clarifying that Hamnet and Hamlet were interchangeable names during the 16th and 17th centuries, as a celestial harmony plays and continues to play past a hard cut to a low angle shot of a tree\u2019s branches, slowly panning to below where Agnes lays, fetally curled along its thick roots. The audience learns as she wakes up that she has some sort of connection to nature, or deep understanding seen by her ability to call upon a hawk to land on her arm. The scenery changes to a dim lit building, where William takes his place as seemingly rehearsing lines with a group of children; his attention shifts when he spots through a window, Agnes with her signature colored red and hawk companion, to which he chooses to follow her into a shed, his curiosity apparently unquenchable. Their love story begins in this moment, when Agnes declines sharing her name followed by William essentially asking for a kiss, their hands slotting together, and her declaration that he cannot see her again. What follows shortly after this sequence, is of course, them meeting again in the forest and sharing a kiss, later a sex scene, and even later, the birth of their first child together.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Of all of these moments, by far the most interesting (which it wasn\u2019t particularly <\/span>that <\/span><\/i>interesting overall) is Agnes\u2019s labor, where she frantically makes her way into the forest to give birth, the wind\u2019s roaring, birds chirping, and branches swaying periodically growing louder each time she groans in agony, all captured in an isolating long shot. Mid yell, another hard cut is applied, inserting a black screen and a moment of silence before we see the birth was successful as Agnes holds her child. I\u2019ve never seen a birth scene quite like this one before, but that isn\u2019t exactly a feat when the scene also feels underwhelming in its execution. What we as an audience are supposed to understand during this scene is Agnes\u2019s bond to nature; it representing humanity\u2019s unbreakable tie to the spiritual force within it, that protects and heals us. What the audience <\/span>actually<\/span><\/i> sees is a moment that feels like it should mean something beyond its surface level, but is lost in its own visual and auditory imagery, as well as the applied distance from Agnes, which fails to translate the symbolism properly. While Buckley manages to carry this scene on her heaving back, her yell acting as a glimpse into the tone of the later parts of the film, the integration of nature as its own character falls flat and is all in all disorienting of the film\u2019s goal \u2014 unfortunately, this distracting effort from the first act becomes a pattern that bleeds into the second and third acts of the film as well.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n While reflecting on the whole of the film and the specific parts I found enjoyable, Mescal\u2019s performance does not center any of them. In fact most scenes aren\u2019t entirely memorable when I remove Buckley, as well as Jupe, from them. This became particularly apparent during the second act of the film, which follows the birth of the Shakespeare twins; their birth as well as raising meant to grab and hold your heartstrings while the film proudly prepares to showcase the tragedy it’s based upon \u2014 the death of Hamnet \u2014 and wrench them out of your being. Hamnet\u2019s death scene is by far the most memorable to me, as Jupe\u2019s acting is so moving that it almost makes me forget about the manicured attempts for a collective sob session, and excessive pointing to moments requiring sympathy, that follow after. For a film that is centered around emotional expression and acceptance, it truly never appeared to believe in its audience\u2019s ability to feel on their own, nor did it ever appear to accept itself as being devoid of the emotion it was trying to convey. Moreover, the exploration of grief and the multiple ways grief can show up in our lives was interesting to hear about, but experiencing the execution felt shallow and a lot left for the imagination, due to this theme only ever being of focus in the final scene of <\/span>Hamnet<\/span><\/i>. During this final scene, Hamnet\u2019s limbo is resolved through William\u2019s presentation of his play <\/span>Hamlet<\/span><\/i>, that Agnes and her brother attend after a substantial period of separation from him. At first, Agnes makes an entire fool of herself (a moment where Buckley\u2019s acting is overdone I will say) but in a moment of realization, she calls upon the idea that she is witnessing the spirit of her son on the stage, causing both her resentful grief to dissolve and her understanding of her husband to grow, finally realizing that grief should never be felt alone \u2014 it is something that is shared, seen through the crowds resonance with Shakespeare\u2019s art despite not having endured his, along with Agnes\u2019s, same pain.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n A lot of my experience with this film felt like a constant prying for the substance that it’s telling me is there but failing to show, which quickly became exhausting as it registered to me that the film was just never going to go beyond its general interpretations and aesthetically pleasing cinematography. If I were to ignore Zhao\u2019s orchestrated emotional cues implemented purely for award show buzz, I\u2019m sure I would have enjoyed this just a tad more \u2014 but not much \u2014 as even without the deliberate attempts at sob-bait, the film does not have much going for it beyond impressive performances by two actors and nice, but conventional, visuals.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Reviewed by Hanna Ward. Viewed at the SBIFF. Nomadland director, Chlo\u00e9 Zhao, has returned to the Academy\u2019s radar with her film, Hamnet, receiving eight total Oscar nominations \u2014 including Best Picture of 2026. During my time with the SBIFF, I have attended almost every Best Picture nominee screening at the Arlington Theater, and Hamnet was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":249155,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,441],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films","category-santa-barbara-film-festival-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/249155"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48908"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49090,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48908\/revisions\/49090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}