William Shakespeare is an enigma, we know the works, but little about the man, his life is laid bare in Kenneth Branagh’s film, All is True. Another caveat, I’m an English major and Shakespeare is foremost with my interests, and I made the journey to the Globe Theater in London and Stratford-upon-Avon in 2009. The movie has a strange route, it had a limited release last year to try to qualify for the Academy Awards, it opened in the UK in February this year, and now has a limited run in the US until it opens in a wide release. Kenneth Branagh’s first film, Henry V (1989) was a brilliant adaptation of Shakespeare’s drama, I saw his full version of Hamlet (1996) with intermission, he is also known as an actor/director with Murder on the Orient Express (2017). He has made seven films based on Shakespeare’s work with this movie now looking at the Bard himself. The film is written by Ben Elton who has written for the Blackadder series and starred as Verges in Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing (1993).
It begins with the title card that it is the year 1613, William Shakespeare was mounting a production of Henry VIII when a cannon set the theater on fire and burned it down. We see the silhouette of Shakespeare against the fire at night. The play was under its alternative title, All is True. Shakespeare retired from that moment. The interesting part is that we get shots that are distant, Shakespeare’s face is in shadow, there isn’t closeups until later, so we are in the outside looking in. He rides a horse back to his house in Stratford-upon-Avon. He sees a swan swimming out in a lake. This is something I noticed at Stratford-upon-Avon there are flocks of swans everywhere. He sees a vision of a young boy, whom we later find out is Hamnet (Sam Ellis), his departed son. I keep hearing Hamlet, even knowing it is about Shakespeare’s son, it feels that the play has some resonance with the playwright’s life. William returns home, but is not welcomed by his family since he not visited in twenty years.
The family is led by Anne Hathaway, not the actress, his wife played by Dame Judi Dench, and Judith Shakespeare (Kathryn Wilder). Dench is a formidable actress, she won the Academy Award for Shakespeare in Love (1998), known for playing M in the James Bond films including Skyfall (2012), and also starred as Princess Dragomiroff in Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express. Anne has held the house and family together even after the death of Hamnet and her missing husband dedicating his life to the theater. He is a stranger in this house and has him stay in the guest room. Wilder also had a part in Murder on the Orient Express, she played Chaulk in the historical drama Frontier (2017-2018), and currently plays Ashley in the mini-series Adulting. Judith is interesting as the twin sister of Hamnet and seems to resent her father’s idolizing of him so she is withdrawn and lonely. She is also bitter about her sister, Susanna, and her looks. The cast features some of the best actors in a gentle, but dramatic story.
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| Shakespeare's garden and house, 2009, photo by the author. |
The family dynamic makes me think of The Lion in Winter (1968) based on the James Goldman play. The family members using their most personal and family knowledge against each other in the most hurtful ways comes into play later in this film. The other member of the Shakespeare family is Susanna Shakespeare played by Lydia Wilson. Her first film was Never Let Me Go (2010) based on the Kazuo Ishiguro novel, then she was in the Richard Curtis directed romantic time travel film, About Time (2013), and also played Kalara in Star Trek: Beyond (2016). Susanna Hall has married John Hall (Hadley Fraser) and has a child, Elizabeth. She has caused scandal with an affair with Rafe Smith and puts her husband into the town’s dispute with his Puritan beliefs. William Shakespeare is busy with making a garden to honor Hamnet, but he is clumsy in his attempts. We get his legacy now in a small town instead of London and visited by an interested writer and later, the Earl of Southhampton. He is played by Sir Ian Mckellen,Mckellen was Gandalf in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013), he was Magneto in X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), and he will be in the musical film Cats as Gus The Theatre Cat. The earl is a patron of Shakespeare and wants him to return to London. There are family secrets centered on the lost Hamnet, Shakespeare as a person, and a family that needs to be made whole.
Five Quills out of Five!
#AllisTrue, #KennethBranagh, #JudiDench, #KathrynWilder
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