The works of William Shakespeare are so ingrained within the popular consciousness that it can sometimes be difficult to remember that they were in fact written by a man as human as the rest of us. He had a life and a job and a family much like any other, and the dizzying amount of influence he would have on the world after his death is likely something he had no knowledge of during his life. It’s impossible to know for sure what Shakespeare was thinking and feeling when he wrote his plays, but Hamnet – both the film and the Maggie O’Farrell novel it’s based on – tries to guess at what could have influenced the Bard to compose his most acclaimed work. It’s a highly fictionalized take on his life with a heavy focus on his wife Agnes (she’s more commonly known as Anne, but the movie opts for the former) and the tumultuous family life they shared.

Coming from director Chloé Zhao of The Rider and Nomadland fame (she also allegedly directed Eternals for Marvel), Hamnet opens on Agnes (Jessie Buckley), who is portrayed as the latest in a line of women thought of as witches of the wood. More attuned to having her feet in the dirt and a hawk on her arm than anything related to civilization, she meets William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) while he’s teaching Latin to local kids, and soon enough they’re kissing and cavorting their way to the altar. The connection between them is electric and erratic and formed a bit too quickly, leaving the opening scenes feeling like they’re on fast-forward so Zhao can get to the parts she’s more interested in. But the film settles into a more amiable groove once Agnes pops out the first of three kids, and the big idea of the piece can start to take shape.

What may initially appear to be a “great man struggling to balance his work with his family” drama to the uninitiated instead becomes a portrait of shared despair when William and Agnes’ subsequent twins Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe) and Judith (Olivia Lynes) enter the picture. It's a historical fact that Hamnet died at the age of 11, but how the film portrays the circumstances leading up to it and how the event occurs not only give the movie its primary dramatic arc, but also Zhao’s most formally appropriate choice. Agnes may not get enough screentime festering within the woods to truly sell her apparently innate connection to the natural world (beyond the great scene of her running off to give birth in the muck beneath a giant tree), but the light supernatural bent to Hamnet’s death is the perfect touch to sell the overbearing weight of his loss and how it would have a transcendent effect on the world through his father’s art.

Yet although the film does draw a direct line between Hamnet’s death and William writing Hamlet, it doesn’t try to force the connection where it doesn’t belong. The smartest aspect of the script is the way it reflects the reality of how personal tragedies influence artistic creation: sort of sideways. Art is a messy endeavor, and it rarely maps as a perfect metaphor to the artist’s lived experience. Hamlet, as a play, does not correlate to every part of Hamnet’s life, nor would it even if it was a known fact that his son’s death was what pushed William to write it. But there are echoes of how William processes his grief in some of the play’s scenes depicted in the film, such as King Hamlet’s ghost speaking to his son, or Hamlet’s iconic “to be or not to be” speech. Zhao’s invocations not just of Hamlet but some of Shakespeare’s other works, such as a small scene where the three kids take on the roles of the witches from Macbeth, feel like natural extensions of the family dynamic that accentuate the story being told.

That the grief manifests in different ways in Agnes and her husband, with hers being more outward and his burrowing deep into his core, highlights the dichotomy not just between the characters, but also the performances of the actors playing them. Saying that Jessie Buckley is great in a movie is about on par with “the sky is blue” as observations go, but she really does do excellent work in this, brimming with kinetic energy even when the scene demands she sit still. Mescal’s performance is more inconsistent, sometimes striking the right balance between driven and melancholic while other times tipping too far into histrionics. This is best illustrated when Shakespeare starts yelling at his actors for not delivering the lines as he envisions (a great scene), before considering suicide and seemingly coming up with Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy on the spot (a not-great scene). Still, he mostly does the job that’s asked of him, and the kids are excellent, with Jupe in particular being a standout.

But Hamnet truly lives or dies on its final sequence, which is one of Zhao’s most daring swings so far in her career. It's also the perfect summation of Zhao’s thematic interests, and will undoubtedly prompt quite a few tears in any given audience. While I found that the ending worked well, others may consider it overly saccharine depending on their personal perspective. Regardless, it does feel like the only way to bring the picture to a close, and for most, it will likely send Hamnet out on a high note.