Somewhere between the Oscar frontrunners and the critics' darling, Hamnet has planted itself in a peculiar space: a Shakespearean adaptation about grief that refuses sentiment, a period drama that feels urgent, a film about loss that somehow celebrates creation. The movie adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's acclaimed novel Hamnet has scored eight Oscar nominations including Best Picture. This alone makes it worth examining, not least because it tells us something about what the Academy values this year.
The film follows a deceptively simple premise: William Shakespeare and his wife Agnes experience the death of their eleven-year-old son, Hamnet, and that devastation shapes the writing of his most celebrated play. Hamnet is a biographical film that dramatizes the life William Shakespeare shared with wife Agnes Hathaway while dealing with the death of their 11-year-old son, Hamnet. The movie is based on the 2020 historical fiction novel of the same name by Maggie O'Farrell. What makes this premise potentially revolutionary is its refusal to subordinate personal tragedy to cultural achievement. The tragedy is not a stepping stone to genius; the grief is the whole story, with the play as its afterthought.
The film received numerous accolades, including winning the Best Motion Picture – Drama and Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama for Buckley at the 83rd Golden Globe Awards, and eight nominations at the 98th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director for Zhao, and Best Actress for Buckley. Director Chloé Zhao returns to the Oscar stage after her Nomadland victories in 2021. She's up for three Oscars for Hamnet: best picture, best director and best adapted screenplay alongside author Maggie O'Farrell.
But the real story is Jessie Buckley's Agnes. The website's consensus reads: "Breaking hearts and mending them in one fell swoop, Hamnet speculates on the inspiration behind Shakespeare's masterpiece with palpable emotional force thanks to Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal's astonishing performances." Buckley has dominated the awards season, and she arrives at the Oscars having already collected major prizes. She also took home the BAFTA award last weekend and the Critics Choice award for her role.
The critical consensus has been unusually warm. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 87% of 336 critics' reviews are positive. Yet the film has not been universally celebrated. The Wall Street Journal's Kyle Smith called it a "quintessential Oscar bait (highbrow foundation; maximal crying and emoting) but is dogged by intellectual anachronism." This critique points at something worth considering: the film operates in a space where accessibility and ambition collide. It is unapologetically moving, which some interpret as manipulative.
What's interesting is how Hamnet enters the Oscar race in 2026 not as a dominant force, but as a serious contender in a field so fractured that the outcome remains genuinely uncertain. Hamnet is trumped in the nominations by Sinners, which scored an impressive 16 nominations, including Best Picture, best director for Ryan Coogler, and acting nominations for Michael B. Jordan, Delroy Lindo and Wunmi Mosaku. Its tally of 16 breaks the record of 14 held by All About Eve, Titanic and La La Land for the most Oscar nominations. Yet Sinners' dominance in nomination counts does not guarantee victory; the Oscar race has proven repeatedly that breadth of recognition does not predict wins.
The film's strength may lie precisely in what some dismisses as weakness: its emotional directness. "When it comes to awards or things like that, and this gathering of people celebrating your work, there is an element of that — of feeling validated, of feeling seen," she says. Zhao articulated something genuine about why this film was made. It was not constructed as awards ammunition. It emerged from a genuine desire to explore how grief moves through a household, how it refracts between two people who loved each other and their lost child.
The question for the Academy on Sunday, 15 March, is whether emotional authenticity—which Hamnet possesses in abundance—can compete with the spectacle and reach of other films. There is no obvious answer. What remains clear is that this quiet film about an English playwright's family tragedy has entered the conversation alongside bombastic spectacles and genre experiments. In a year when Oscar attention has scattered across competing visions of cinema, Hamnet's understated power may be exactly what breaks through.