Hamnet review: Jessie Buckley is extraordinary in Chloé Zhao’s tender act of Shakespearean catharsis

The jury’s out on popcorn and the case has been made against phone use (time to criminalise?), but where do we stand on big, ugly, drenching-the-cinema-floor sobbing? Chloé Zhao’s ( Nomadland ) Tudor tearjerker makes the debate suddenly germane. ‘Take tissues’ is a hopeless cliché. Tissues won’t do. You’ll need towels.

With Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal delivering the performances of their careers, tells the story behind Shakespeare’s great tragedy – – and much more besides. The wild power of motherhood; the fearsome responsibility of parenting; the jolting anxiety of nurturing something precious in a time of death; the drive for creative expression. Zhao holds all these primal but relatable forces in check before unleashing them in an emotionally totalising final reel.

Devo