There comes a point in every Oscar race where one of the frontrunners' credentials gets called into question.
Sometimes it comes in the form of someone raising concerns about the behaviour of one of those involved in a particular movie.
Occasionally a contender's artistic credentials are attacked - for example, when it emerged 'The Brutalist' director Brady Corbet had used AI in post production to make Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones' dialogue in Hungarian more authentic.
Often it comes from naysayers who start to question whether the film is all it's cracked up to be.
That happened to 'La La Land,' 'A Star Is Born,' and 'Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri' and most of the time, it injects just enough doubt to undermine the film's bid for Best Picture.
From the outset of this year's awards season, there have been two clear Best Picture frontrunners.
In the blue corner we have seen Paul Thomas Anderson's 'One Battle After Another'.
In the red is Chloe Zhao's 'Hamnet'.
In a tight Oscar race, the fact that Zhao already has Best Picture and Best Director gongs in her trophy cabinet for 'Nomadland' is probably a bit of negative - especially when you consider Anderson has had five screenplay, three director and three picture nominations stretched over six films and has still managed to come away empty handed.
However as awards season gets going, a 'La La Land' style backlash against 'Hamnet' has also begun with some critics, most notably in the UK, accusing the film of being manipulative and artificial and dismissing it as "grief porn".
But is that fair?
You'd have to have been living the past few months in a bunker if you don't know by now that 'Hamnet' is about the death of Shakespeare's son.
Jessie Buckley stars as Agnes Hathaway, a young woman with a flair for falconry and an appreciation of the supernatural who catches the eye of Paul Mescal's William Shakespeare as he tutors two boys.
Leaving a lesson, William introduces himself to Agnes and there is an instant romantic connection.
Their family circumstances are such that any liaison between them would normally be frowned upon by William's father, David Wilmot's John Shakespeare and his mother, Emily Watson's Mary.
However the lovers are so determined to become husband and wife that William gets Agnes pregnant.
With the blessing of John Shakespeare and Agnes' brother, Joe Alwyn's Bartholomew, she marries William despite Mary's reservations.
The couple go on to have three children - Bodhi Rae Breathnach's Susanna and twins, Jacobi Jupe's Hamnet and Olivia Lynes' Judith.
During a traumatic birth, Judith is born after Hamnet and somehow manages to survive after initially being written off as stillborn.
Agnes is initially puzzled that she has three children because a premonition told her two children will be at her side when she lies on her deathbed.
Keeping a particularly close eye on Judith's health, Agnes and the family become resigned to William frequently having to travel to London where he is earning money by building a career as a celebrated playwright.
Hamnet finds his father's parting from the family especially tough and is urged by William to be the man of the house in his absence, protecting his mother and sisters.
When he isn't doing that, Hamnet aspires to be an actor in his father's theatre company where he can impress audiences with his swordplay.
The family is thrown into turmoil when Judith is struck down with the plague while William is working at the Globe, with Agnes doing all in her power to help her daughter survive.
Judith does survive but only after Hamnet intervenes vowing to help her cheat death, only for him to take her place.
Dying in his mother's arms, Hamnet's death leaves Agnes inconsolable with grief and rage.
His death results in her venting her anger and frustration at William for failing to be there when Judith and then Hamnet succumbed to illness.
What follows is a searing examination by Zhao and her cast of what it is like for parents to lose a child and process the death.
Zhao and her fellow screenwriter Maggie O'Farrell, who wrote the 2020 novel on which it is based, have crafted a superb screenplay that allows the cast to properly explore the rawness of loss.
Not surprisingly, Buckley and Mescal are more than up to the task.
Buckley is simply mesmerising as an unconventional wife and a mother consumed by love and the worst grief imaginable.
Her pain and rage leaps off the screen and pierces the heart with an authenticity that few of her contemporaries can match.
Mescal arguably has an even tougher job as a man whose innate sense of duty to his family and compulsion to write starts to alienate him from his wife.
His is a generous and emotionally intelligent performance, enabling Buckley to shine.
But the performance is also deft enough not to be obliterated by Buckley, ensuring we also understand Shakespeare's pain.
If Buckley and Mescal dazzle, the same can be said about Jacobi Jupe as Hamnet, the always reliable Watson, Wilmot, Breathnach, Lynes, Justine Mitchell as Agnes' stepmother Joan Hathaway who she has a tetchy relationship with, Louisa Harland as her birth mother and Noah Jupe who plays an actor in Shakespeare's company.
Joe Alwyn also delivers his best screen performance to date as Agnes' brother, gelling magnificently with Buckley.
We know Zhao is a terrific director and it comes as no surprise that she is able to deftly handle a subject that would be a tough sell to any mainstream cinema audience.
Working with the Polish cinematographer Lukasz Zak, she gets every call right, using the mise en scene quite brilliantly to hammer home the devastation experienced by Hamnet's parents and siblings.
Lingering images of empty rooms and also the physical distance between Agnes and William in scenes only underscore the devastating impact of Hamnet's death.
Nevertheless the final act of the film is hugely uplifting, with Buckley in particular demonstrating how great screen acting is not really about what you say but how you look.
To claim, as some have done that 'Hamnet' is manipulative or artificial or even grief porn is ridiculous.
After all, how could a story about parents suddenly losing a child be anything other than emotionally devastating?
Have a bit of heart.
Zhao has delivered a hugely empathetic and profoundly moving film that comes together quite brilliantly in the final act.
Whether her film walks away with Best Picture on Oscar night, though, is actually immaterial.
'Hamnet' is a movie we are unlikely to forget.
Like all the best cinema, it's a visceral experience whose intelligence and power few films will be able to match this year or any other year.
And for that reason alone, it should be lauded.
('Hamnet' was released in UK and Irish cinemas on January 9, 2026)
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