Hamnet - 8 Nominations

 

Best Casting: Nina Gold

Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Score): Max Richter

Best Motion Picture of the Year: Liza Marshall, Pippa Harris, Nicolas Gonda, Steven Spielberg, Sam Mendes

Best Achievement in Directing: Chloé Zhao

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role: Jessie Buckley

Best Adapted Screenplay: Maggie O’Farrell, Chloé Zhao

Best Achievement in Production Design: Fiona Crombie (production designer), Alice Felton (set decorator)

Best Achievement in Costume Design: Malgosia Turzanska

Hamnet is the beautiful and deeply moving story of William Shakespeare and his family; how he met his wife, his rise in popularity, and the family that he left behind when he went to London to put on what would become enduring work that would live well beyond his lifetime. With this film, Chloe Zhao has done something powerful. While we have seen films before that play out a “real life” story that eventually become a Shakespeare play (a la, Shakespeare in Love), this feels grounded in a world that feels as real as it is theatrical, and as theatrical as it is real. Of course the technical categories lend themselves to the experience, but what makes this movie are the performances from Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, and the three child actors who play their children. (At this point, I can’t see anyone taking the gold from Jessie Buckley.)
We know that Chloe Zhao is an outstanding director, but the thing that connects her Oscar winning Nomadland to Hamnet is her ability to have enduring compassion for her women leads while still showing them to be fully human, whether pooping in a bucket in a van or giving birth alone in the woods.
And here is my big reveal - if you are going to see only 2 or 3 of the nominated Best Pictures this year, make sure that Hamnet is one of them.