Dear Public Diary ,

I just finished a movie that left me quiet for a long time afterward. The kind of quiet where you don’t immediately reach for your phone, where you just sit there and breathe, trying to understand what your heart is carrying now. It’s one of those films I wish I had watched years ago. I didn’t expect it to be this good. I didn’t expect it to hurt like this.

The movie is Hamnet. And it tells the tragedy behind William Shakespeare’s life — the loss of his son.

I’ve read Shakespeare. I’ve admired his words. I’ve quoted his lines about grief and love and absence. But I never truly understood where that depth came from until now. After watching this, I finally believe something I’ve always suspected: you can’t describe pain you’ve never felt. You can’t write loss like that unless it once lived inside your body. Now I understand how he could write lines like, “Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.” Now I understand.

And I have to talk about the acting, because it deserves its own space. Every performance in this film feels painfully honest. Nothing is exaggerated, nothing feels forced. The actors don’t perform grief — they inhabit it. Agnes’s pain lives in her eyes, in the way her body collapses inward, in the silence between her breaths. William’s sorrow is quieter, heavier, carried in his posture and his distance. Even the children feel real in a way that’s rare on screen. It’s the kind of acting that doesn’t ask for attention, yet holds you completely. Flawless not because it’s dramatic, but because it’s human. You believe every tear, every pause, every unfinished sentence. It feels less like watching a movie and more like witnessing real people trying to survive something unbearable.

This movie is for anyone who has lost someone. For anyone who knows what it feels like when a presence suddenly becomes a memory. And honestly — that’s all of us, at some point. We all lose someone. Watching it, I found myself thinking more than watching. I felt everything they said. I felt Agnes’s pain, her anger, her helplessness. I felt how lost William was. I felt the quiet guilt that lived inside Judith. Every emotion landed heavy.

Nothing is more painful than losing someone you love. And I think losing your own child must be the worst pain a human can carry.

My mom always used to tell us that she hopes she’ll be the first to go. She says she can’t imagine losing any of us. She can’t imagine life without one of her children. And that sentence alone carries so much pain. Because I can’t imagine life without her either.

The story follows Shakespeare and Agnes after the death of their son, Hamnet. It begins gently, with ordinary life — children running through fields, small domestic moments, quiet love between husband and wife. Agnes is portrayed as deeply intuitive, almost mystical, connected to nature, to herbs, to healing. She carries a quiet strength, but also a long-standing fear. Since she was young, she had always believed one of her children would die. And all her life, she thought it would be her daughter.

So she fought for Judith. From birth, she protected her, treated her illnesses, watched her closely. Every fever mattered. Every cough was a threat. She poured all her energy into saving her daughter.

And while she was listening to Judith breathe…

Hamnet was dying in silence.

That part destroyed me.

When Agnes realizes what’s happening, it’s already too late. Everything she tries comes too late. All the effort, all the herbs, all the prayers — for nothing. Sometimes we try to run from destiny even when we know we can’t escape it. We hold onto “maybe.” Maybe this will work. Maybe there’s still time. Maybe love is enough to stop death.

I remembered my grandmother’s last hours while watching this. We all knew she was dying. We knew those were her final moments. But every single one of us kept trying anyway — adjusting pillows, calling doctors, whispering to her, hoping for just one more hour. Just a little more time. Even when she was in pain. I think when it comes to this, we become selfish. We can live far from each other, but we cannot accept losing them. We need their presence in this world. We are not ready for their absence.

Agnes’s scream when she finally understands what she’s lost is not dramatic. It’s raw. It’s animal. Crying isn’t enough to release that kind of pain. And so she turns it into anger. She turns it on William. She needs someone to blame, because sometimes blame is the only way to survive.

On the other side, William carries a different kind of suffering. The guilt of being away while his son was dying. The guilt of arriving too late. The pain of losing the child he was closest to. The slow loss of his wife, who becomes distant after the tragedy. The weight of continuing to live far from his family even after Hamnet’s death.

I can’t imagine how heavy that must feel on a person’s soul.

His art grows deeper because of it — but at what cost?

It’s a terrible price. A price that leaves you hollow inside. There is nothing more tragic than a father losing his son and not being there to say goodbye. Being present in someone’s last moments doesn’t erase the pain, but it changes it. Being far leaves you questioning everything forever.

I’m writing this with a lump in my throat, tears in my eyes, and something aching in my chest. Because I know loss. Maybe not this exact loss — but loss all the same.

And then there is Judith.

The little girl who survives.

The guilt she carries is heartbreaking. The feeling that her brother died in her place. That it was supposed to be her. That he saved her by leaving. That kind of guilt is real, and it’s devastating — especially for a child.

There’s a scene I replayed several times. William returns after Hamnet’s death and hugs Judith tightly, relieved she’s alive while his son is gone. When he puts her down, the way she looks at him says everything. It’s the look of someone who feels guilty for breathing. Guilty for existing. It’s survivor’s guilt in its purest form.

No child should carry that.

The movie doesn’t follow Judith’s later life, but I found myself wanting to know everything about her. How did she grow up? Did she ever forgive herself? Did she stop believing she was the wrong one who lived?

The film shows grief in a calm, quiet way. No big speeches. Just silence, distance, closed doors, empty beds. It shows how sadness changes people. How guilt reshapes relationships. How anger walks hand in hand with pain.

It also shows that sometimes art is born from sorrow. That sadness can force things out of you that were buried deep. That sometimes creativity is the only way to survive what hurts.

Nietzsche once said, “We have art in order not to die of the truth,”

William was already lost before his son died. He didn’t know his place. He didn’t know his direction. And as cruel as it sounds, it feels like this tragedy pushed him toward his true voice. I hate even writing that. But history shows us this pattern again and again.

Van Gogh — my favorite painter — poured his sadness onto canvas. Dostoevsky wrote from the depths of despair. So many artists created their greatest work from their darkest places.

I’m not saying you have to be broken to be brilliant. But sadness is a powerful emotion. When it finally finds a way out, it can become something immense.

The relationship between Agnes and William feels painfully real. Love mixed with distance. Connection tangled with silence. They begin so easily, so softly. But after tragedy, everything becomes complicated. They are close, yet far. Together, yet alone.

Agnes helps William go to London. Then they slowly drift apart. And Hamnet’s death becomes the final break. Agnes closes herself off. She places all the blame on William. She refuses to let him in.

Is it fair? Maybe not.

But grief doesn’t care about fairness.

William lost his son too. He was in pain too. But pain doesn’t always look the same on both sides of a marriage. I say this carefully, because I wasn’t there. Maybe I would have done the same. It’s easy to judge from a distance.

The movie also touches on William’s relationship with his own father, and that part made me angry. His father is bitter, defeated, cruel. He treats his son with coldness and disappointment. He projects his own failures onto him.

Why do some fathers do this?

Why hurt your own child because you couldn’t become what you wanted?

Not all men deserve to be fathers. Some people should never bring children into their unresolved pain.

By the end of Hamnet, I felt emptied and full at the same time. Empty because of everything it took from me emotionally. Full because it reminded me how deeply human grief is, how universal love and loss are.

Shakespeare once wrote, “When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.” This movie understands that truth completely.

And maybe that’s what stayed with me the most.

That grief doesn’t arrive politely.

It breaks in.

And we spend the rest of our lives learning how to live beside it.