Did you cry during Hamnet?
On social media, many viewers shared the overwhelming emotions elicited by the film, which has been nominated for eight Academy Awards.
One viewer commented on Reddit that the movie was an "out of body experience." Another posted on X that it left them "covered in tears" and "ugly crying the entire drive home." New York Times columnist Sarah Wildman wrote that the film left her "sobbing in my seat."
In Hamnet, which director Chloé Zhao adapted from Maggie O'Farrell's 2020 novel of the same name, William Shakespeare's youngest son, Hamnet, dies of the bubonic plague at the age of 11. The film traces the profound impact this loss has on his family, while also suggesting that Hamnet's death influenced the genesis of Shakespeare's tragic masterpiece Hamlet.
But as critics debate whether Hamnet constitutes "grief porn" or is instead a brilliant field guide for how to move through the dark woods of sorrow, I found the film so compelling due to how the characters themselves grieve.
