Paul Mescal stars as a grieving William Shakespeare in the film Hamnet, directed by Chloé Zhao. He discusses how the ending reveals the profound effects of losing his son, transforming personal tragedy into artistic inspiration for Hamlet. The production team highlights visual and auditory elements that underscore this emotional journey.
In Hamnet, Paul Mescal portrays William Shakespeare, known as Will, who grapples with the death of his son Hamnet. This loss eventually fuels his creation of Hamlet. Director Chloé Zhao and cinematographer Łukasz Żal used framing to contrast Will and his wife Agnes, played by Jessie Buckley. Agnes appears as a free spirit in open compositions, while Will is confined in his family home with small windows, reflecting suffocation. Żal noted, “He is stuck in his family house, this place where he’s always teaching. The windows are small, and he’s always inside, always in a structure.”
The film captures the magic of their romance with closer shots following emotions. Żal explained, “What you feel, how you look at somebody’s eyes. You’re also very present, and the world looks beautiful.” After Hamnet's death, visuals shift: heavy skies, dim light, and isolated frames. “They are alone in their frames, and they’re not connected anymore,” Żal said, with the camera moving slowly and uncomfortably.
Costume designer Malgosia Turzanska reflected Will’s arc through clothing. Padded outfits, inspired by sportswear, protect him from his emotionally abusive father. Sleeve slashes grow larger over time, and a toothpick necklace symbolizes his father “picking” at him. In London, Will completes Hamlet and plays the ghost at the Globe Theatre, dressed in linen cloth covered in clay to evoke a broken state. At the end, he washes it off, symbolizing freedom.
Composer Max Richter's score darkens in this scene: “He just sortof breaks to pieces. This is the almost darkened version of this choral, vocal cloud, which we’ve had from the beginning, connected to Agnes and nature. But it’s almost like the cloud of a moonless night. So it’s kind of super dark.”
Mescal approached the role by analyzing a life’s spectrum, from love to grief. “I was excited by the fact that I would get to show a lot of colors in terms of that,” he said. The ending pressures him to convey Will’s pain: “That’s really Will’s opportunity with an audience — to let them in, to see the cost of the loss of Hamnet and the impact that it has had on him.”
