Hamnet - 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

Hamnet begins as none other than William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal), the legendary playwright, meets his bride-to-be, Agnes (Jessie Buckley). But he’s far from the legendary playwright who’s still world-famous hundreds of years after his death. The two fall immediately in love. He sees something in her that he’s seen in no woman before, and though she’s hesitant, that’s what she loves about him. She loves that he loves her for who she is, and not what he can make her be. Despite his family's objections, the two wed and form a family of their own. And as William's career as a playwright takes off, it places a strain on their bond.

William is rarely home; he’s often off in London with his theater troupe, putting on a play, while Agnes is at home with the kids. It’s one of those occasions when tragedy strikes and claims one of their children, their young boy, Hamnet. Agnes resents William for not being there when the family needed him the most, but most of all, she blames him for dealing with the pain and the agony their child went through all alone. When he reassures her that she did all that she could, she shrieks at him that she knows she did everything in her power. She’s not concerned about what she did; she’s concerned about what he didn’t do.

I don’t believe, as so many others do, that pain and suffering are a prerequisite for creating great art. I believe that all that’s required of someone to create great art is the desire to create. But I do also believe that great art can be born of great suffering. It’s a means of sharing that pain with the world, a great cathartic cry that the artist and the entire world can share in. William is suffering, in his own quiet, self-destructive way, with the death of his son, when he pens the play Hamlet—Hamnet and Hamlet were synonymous names.

It would have been so easy for Hamnet to have been cheesy, but Chloe Zhao’s direction is so self-assured, so confident, that even a moment where the playwright crafts the famous “To be or not to be…” monologue from the play, it isn’t an eyeroll-inducing moment. It feels genuine because it’s anchored by such a great, wounded performance from Mescal. And Buckley, as Agnes, carries the entire picture. She has a role that could have easily been one-note, but she gives it power. She’s not the suffering wife of a distant husband; she’s a confident woman who’s not afraid to embrace her anguish and rage, and to lash out when she feels she needs to lash out.

The ending of the film is a wonderful moment that speaks to the power of art and of creation. It’s not a simple matter of seeing a performance, or of reading a few words, but that art invites you into itself, into the mind of the artist, to explore this feeling, this emotion, that we all feel, and to know that we’re not alone. It speaks to the quality of films in 2025 that Hamnet didn’t sweep the Oscars. In any other year, it would have been a shoo-in for every major award, but in a year that also saw Sinners and One Battle After Another, it was merely one more great film in the company of so many other great films.

Vital Disc Stats: The 4K UHD Blu-ray
Hamnet gets its physical media release in a two-disc set, seeing the film in both UHD and HD, housed in a standard case with a removable slipcover. The case and the slipcover both contain identical artwork, and inside the case is a code that can be used for redemption on digital platforms.

Whenever people lament the current state of cinematography, that movies shot digitally just don’t look as good as the older ones shot on film, I like to point out that it’s all in the lighting. Cinematographers worth their salt know how to light on both formats. Lukasz Zal is adept at lighting for a digital presentation, and I dare you to point out to me how it could be improved by switching formats. For this release, in 4K with Dolby Vision HDR, colors are brilliantly vivid, such as Agnes in her red dress against a backdrop of greenery for the landscape. The lighting is varied and naturalistic, with the dim, unlit interiors seemingly illuminated only by a few rays of sunlight peering in from the outside world.

The Dolby Atmos mix included with Hamnet is incredible. Yes, this is a talky picture, an old-fashioned drama, whose sound mix consists of 90% of people talking to each other. And, perhaps as an intentional nod to the proscenium arch of a stage play, it’s very front-heavy. But the atmospheric effects are fully enveloping, such as a breeze that begins gently and gains momentum, whooshing from the front to the rear of the soundstage, with leaves rustling in the top channels. As the camera pans 360 degrees, characters’ voices whirl about, carried from speaker to speaker, as if they inhabit the home theater with us.

As far as bonus features go, Hamnet isn't bad, but it's not a groundbreaking assortment either. It has a few short featurettes about the film's making-of, as well as a feature-length audio commentary from director Chloe Zhao. The featurettes are informative but brief, leaving Zhao's commentary to do the heavy lifting. 

• Audio Commentary - Director Chloe Zhao
• Family is Forever (HD 7:27)
• Cultivating Creativity (HD 4:35) 
• Recreating the Tudor Period (HD 10:10)

Hamnet is a study not only in grief, but in the creative process, and how that process helps us understand that grief. And, in the birth of that creation, it can touch upon the souls that have experienced similar losses in their lives. It’s a masterful film, heartbreaking and beautiful in equal measure, that somehow never succumbs to cheap melodramatic spectacle. As a film, it’s lovely. As a disc, it boasts terrific A/V stats, with gorgeous cinematography, and a Dolby Atmos mix that takes full advantage of its 3D spatial audio. Hamnet is Highly Recommended.