That is the question asked by London Film Academy’s Damila Dumi-Leslie, during her work placement with London Breeze.
When Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet came out in cinemas, I was beyond excited to see it but couldn’t find the time. But the good thing about taking my time to see Hamnet was that I got to hear other people’s recommendations on why it’s a good watch, and one sentiment kept popping up over and over; it wasn’t praise for the cinematography, sound design or the performances, all of which were phenomenal. It was this: “You are going to cry. Like, actually sob.” Every single recommendation came with that warning, almost like a rite of passage. Bring tissues. Prepare yourself. Do not wear mascara.
It got to the point that I would be at the cinema, ready to watch the film but decide to watch something else instead because I wasn’t ready to cry in public that day.
The expectation of tears was so built into this experience for me that I had to ask myself about Zhao’s intentions for Hamnet and ask the question: when does emotional storytelling become emotional manipulation?
Hamnet tells the story of Shakespeare’s son, who dies at a very young age, and the ripple effect that loss has on his family. It is intimate and domestic rather than an epic drama. The characters’ grief is not loud, it’s subtle in a way we’ve come to expect from Zhao’s storytelling. She leans into soft natural lighting and long pauses. For many critics, this restraint is what makes the film powerful. They argue that the emotion builds slowly and organically, that when tears come, they feel like a release.
But others were less convinced.
Some reviewers felt that Hamnet’s beauty worked against it. The careful framing and poetic pacing, all of it struck certain critics as overly deliberate. They questioned whether the film was guiding audiences too firmly toward catharsis. Many of them were wary of the films for its need to pry emotion out of the audience.
That tension sits at the centre of the divided response. Supporters see Zhao’s style as compassionate. They believe the visuals and storytelling honour the characters’ lives. Detractors, however, argue that grief presented so aesthetically feels curated for the explicit purpose of making audiences emotional and filling cinema seats when those audience members inevitably recommend the film to their peers with the hook, “You’re going to cry over this”.
This debate reminds me of how people talk about The Fault in Our Stars, a favourite film of mine. It centres on two teenagers with cancer falling in love, which already carries a lot of emotional weight. The characters make dramatic declarations that seem too poetic for teenaged minds to come up with, promising each other “forever.” The movie definitely made people cry, but it also felt very aware of its own tearjerker identity. At times, it is almost as if the script is nudging you and saying, “This is the sad part.” And for some viewers, that works. For others, it feels a little too guided, like the movie is doing the emotional work for you instead of letting you arrive there on your own. This is another movie where its recommendations end with, “You’re going to cry”.
Then there is Titanic, which fully embraces emotional orchestration. The sweeping score, the prolonged farewell, the slow sinking into icy water. When you watch this film for the first time you expect a romantic but action-packed adventure; however the doomed romance story the film turns into is engineered to make audiences sob, and it succeeds. Yet people rarely accuse it of dishonesty because the emotional arc feels narratively earned.
Hamnet falls somewhere between those extremes. It is not melodramatic, but it is undeniably composed. The camera lingers. Silence stretches in ways that feel intentional.
What fascinated me most was how the conversation around the film seemed almost obsessed with tears. No one said, “You should watch this because it explores grief in a nuanced way.” They said, “You are going to sob.” That emphasis turns crying into the measure of success. If you cry, the film worked. If you don’t, did it fail?
That is where the question of honesty comes in. Cinema will always shape our emotions. Lighting, music, pacing, performance, all of it is crafted. The issue is not whether filmmakers engineer feelings. They do. The real question is whether engineering overshadows authentic feelings.
Hamnet’s divided reception shows just how thin that line is. Some viewers felt deeply moved, describing their tears as earned and cathartic. Others felt aware of the filmmaking machinery behind those tears, as if the film had carefully plotted the emotional beats in advance. Neither reaction is necessarily wrong. They just reveal how differently we respond to crafted sorrow.
By the time I finally watched Hamnet, I was hyper aware of my own reaction. Was I crying because the story resonated, or because I expected to be devastated? That lingering uncertainty might be the most interesting part of the whole debate. It forces us to consider not just whether a film makes us cry, but whether those tears feel like they belong to us.
Damila Dumi-Leslie