Movie review
November 26, 2025 · 126 min · PG-13
Woke Score
Lower is better
Review
This 2025 prestige drama follows Agnes (Jessie Buckley) and young Will Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) through marriage, kids, and the plague death of their son Hamnet—supposedly sparking Hamlet itself. It's raw grief porn with mystical healer vibes for Agnes and zero modern lectures, swaps, or agenda rants. Zhao and O'Farrell stick to universal heartbreak and art-from-loss. Some folks gripe it's quietly feminist by centering the wife, but that's book-faithful literary stuff, not activist takeover. Pure tearjerker, no forced crap.
Breakdown
These are the editorial factors and ratings behind our score for Hamnet.
Woke representation / casting
Standard historical accuracy; Agnes gets strong focus as intuitive healer, but natural to source material—no swaps or forced diversity.
Woke political dialogue
None reported; zero explicit lectures or modern activism.
Identity-driven story themes
Grief and art are central/universal; mild female empowerment subtext (Agnes vs. historical neglect) noted in niche reviews but incidental.
Western institutional / cultural critique
Subtle village/religious skepticism via Agnes's mysticism in some analyses, but not central or institutional takedown.
Woke character or canon changes
No ideological reinterpretations of Shakespeare or Hamlet; artistic license on grief link only.
Production
Anti-woke backlash and complaints
Absent in broad coverage; fringe "girl power" gripes exist but weakly sourced.
Creator track record context
Zhao's humanism + O'Farrell's women's stories add mild weight, but no alignment with overt activist content here.
