All Is True *** (2018, Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench, Ian McKellen) – Movie Review

Director Kenneth Branagh’s All Is True (2018) is a thoroughly enjoyable, bitter-sweet look the troubled final days of William Shakespeare. It is a good, honourable, solid, old-fashioned film – the kind the Brits ought to be making, so it’s good to know they are.

When his Globe Theatre in London burns down, Shakespeare returns to Stratford, where he is haunted by the death of his only son Hamnet and tries to mend his broken relationships with his neglected wife Anne Hathaway (Judi Dench) and daughters.

Writer Ben Elton’s screenplay has its hesitations and uncertainties, but it is always on the right track and, despite shaky moments, on the whole it succeeds. A film about loss, missed opportunity, death, old age, and personal failings is hardly a feel-good occasion, like Shakespeare In Love, say, but All Is True has its charms and its entertainment value, and is quite haunting, even a little bit memorable. It turns out with Ben Elton, like with every comedian, there is a serious, sad person trying to stand up and speak.

Branagh gives himself the meaty star role. Obviously he looks, or even seems, nothing like William Shakespeare, even stuck in a silly bald head wig, but he gets by on acting. Not great acting, maybe, but good acting, enough top partially eradicate the memory of his appalling Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express.

This film may have its deficiencies, but it is ten times the movie that Murder on the Orient Express is. This is Branagh is on his home turf – Shakespeare and luvvies. So, good!

Obviously Judi Dench and Ian McKellen are way too old for their roles, probably 30 years too old, but it seriously doesn’t matter a jot. They are actors, great actors, and this finds them gainful employment. Both are very touching and if the film is good, it is quite a lot to do with them. As Henry Wriothesley (Southampton), McKellen does not really have much to do. It looks like it was about two days’ work. It is basically one long scene in a dialogue with Shakespeare. But McKellen is an old scene-stealer and really rips up his few pages of screenplay. Dench has much more to do, and of course she is good, excellent. What else would she be?

Nobody else in the film is quite as good as the three stars. But that is right and fitting, just as its should be. It runs like a filmed stage play, but that works too, with some good touches like the interior scene cinematography filmed solely in candlelight and some bad ideas like Shakespeare running in slow motion at a crucial plot point. The year is 1613, we can’t have slo-mo.

I’m afraid that it is an arthritic old people’s film. There is nothing wrong with that, but young audiences might find it boring. Older, wiser folks can easily find the virtues here, maybe learn a few things about our most famous playwright, while relishing the acting, and being sweetly entertained.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Movie Review

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