Spoiler warning: The following reflection contains spoilers for Hamnet.
Back in January, I wanted to take myself on a solo date and landed on a movie at Ciné. As for which movie, I chose on a whim. Hamnet was always in my periphery, so I didn’t know much about it beyond the few glowing reviews I’ve seen floating on social media.
This was only my second time taking myself to a movie alone (Eternity review coming soon), so I wasn’t too sure of what I was walking into. What I didn’t expect, however, was how much this film would sow a seed. A seed that bloomed into a strong longing for a feeling I’ve always known but could never put into words.
But I didn’t know that yet.
I ordered some tea, silenced my phone, and settled into my seat.
I was captivated from the first shot. The visuals were gorgeous, bathed in warm tones that felt like being in a painting. The camera shifts between sweeping overhead shots that feel almost omniscient and quiet. Watching Shakespeare and Agnes’s love blossom on screen, along with the sweetness of their dear son Hamnet felt disarming. Tender.
But by the halfway mark, that sense of security fell away.
I heard sniffles. Then I felt my own eyes prickling. Before I could stop them, I tasted salt. The screen blurred into a wash of warm oranges, greens, browns, and blues as my heart broke again and again.
When the credits rolled and the lights came on, I realized everyone had been crying with me. In the span of two hours, a theater of strangers became tied by one thread: grief. Grief for a child we never met.
That’s rare. For a film to move an entire room of strangers in the same way. But Hamnet is not a wooden historical drama about Shakespeare’s life. It felt closer to a eulogy, one that imprints on your heart and stays with you long after you’ve left the funeral.
In the film’s interpretation of Shakespeare’s life, the death of his son Hamnet becomes the quiet force behind the creation of Hamlet. A tragedy about a son haunted by the ghost of his father becomes, in this telling, something even more intimate: a father haunted by the loss of his son, who sees him in everything.
Grief has an expiration date in society. There is a window—a few days, maybe a month—where it is acceptable to fall apart. People will bring food, send flowers, say I’m here for you with such sincerity that you almost believe it. And then, quietly, they return to their lives and wait for you to return to yours. The unspoken agreement is that grief is something you do alone, in the dark, where no one has to witness it.
Hamnet refuses that agreement entirely and argues that grief finds its way into the smallest acts of remembrance.
Early on, young Hamnet playfully practices sword fighting with his father, dreaming of the day he might appear in one of Shakespeare’s plays. Later, when Hamlet is finally staged, the title character becomes a master swordsman. It feels less like coincidence and more like Shakespeare honoring his son.
Even Shakespeare himself takes on the role of the dead king’s ghost in the play. Watching that unfold, it’s impossible not to feel the weight behind it. A father stepping into the role of the dead, almost as if wishing he could have taken his son’s place.
The film feels layered in a way that’s almost dizzying. A child’s death becomes a play. The play becomes a performance at the Globe. Centuries later, that performance inspires a novel that is eventually adapted into film.
Then, the grief ripples outward.
To us. The audience watching the film.
For a moment, the act of mourning was no longer something we were expected to carry by ourselves. It became collective, shared.
Watching Hamnet taught me that it is such a privilege to love. But love always comes with a cost: grief. Grief that is ugly, that stretches your heart so thin it might just tear. But you don’t have to do it alone. You don’t have to keep it inside. You can transform it into art, into something meaningful.
Through Hamlet, Shakespeare immortalized his son forever and finally got to say goodbye. With every rendition—across centuries, across mediums—his son will be brought to the stage just like he always dreamt.
And sitting in Ciné, surrounded by strangers wiping their eyes and holding each other, it really felt like we got to meet Hamnet and love him too.