[rating=8.00]
Kenneth Branagh is a man of many geniuses. As a classical actor, he has brought to the silver screen no fewer than six Shakespearean characters, including Hamlet, Macbeth, and Iago, arguably among the most challenging roles the Bard ever wrote. As a director he has brought us Frankenstein, Murder on the Orient Express, Cinderella, and even Thor. While this all speaks to his multitude of capabilities, implicit here is what might be his greatest genius: Kenneth Branagh does what Kenneth Branagh wants.
Of late, the movies his chosen to direct have seemingly been done so to allow Branagh the opportunity to step into characters that he’s long desired to play. And why not? He’s done a remarkable job of it so far. As both a director and a performer (and sometimes writer) he manages to bring classic stories and characters to life in new and interesting ways, even if the overall effort is sometimes faltering. His latest film, All Is True, finds him stepping into the life of one of the most remarkable characters in history, the Bard himself.
Written by screenwriter Ben Elton (most famous, perhaps, for his work on the BBC’s Blackadder), All Is True follows William Shakespeare in his final years. Following a disastrous opening Henry VIII (at the time titled All Is True) during which Shakespeare’s Globe Theater burnt down, the Bard retires to his home in Stratford-upon-Avon, joining his wife, Anne Hathaway (Judi Dench) and daughters Judith and Susannah (Kathryn Wilder and Lydia Wilson) to become a full time family man for the first time in years. Forced to adjust to the slower pace of life than he had in London, Shakespeare must contend with how his absence affected his family, as well as confront the loss of his only son, Hamnet (Sam Ellis), for whom he’s scarcely grieved.
While the film often succumbs to the trappings of the period piece—most notably, a somewhat muddled first act that’s tasked with catching you up on history and exposition—it’s not a difficult to movie to love. Part of the problem with blanket dismissals of Branagh and his proclivity to just do what he wants is that he’s so good at doing them. His Shakespeare is a man haunted by multiple threads of his past, which begin to slowly form a noose of discontent around his neck.
There is a stark humanity in his portrayal, which eschews the myth of William Shakespeare in favor of the man. He is grumpy, he is sad, he is lost. We don’t tend to think of Shakespeare in these terms, but Branagh’s performance adds a new depth of character that tends to get lost in historical studies of who Shakespeare was. The weight of his old life presses down on the slower pace of his new one, forcing him to confront the effects his absence and success had on his family, with occasionally disastrous results.
Throughout the film, however, there is an air of levity, even among all the tragedy both implicit and explicit in the tale. At its core, this is a film about family and what it means to be one. Both Branagh’s direction and performance, as well as Elton’s script, deftly balances the weight of history with the weight of family to explore how fame and its trappings might affect the realities of day to day living.
Along the way we are given more than a few brilliant and captivating scenes that fully display how talented a director Branagh is. The best of which is a short, eight-minute scene with Ian McKellan as Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton. McKellan’s talents are such that with a brief appearance he can almost steal an entire movie. He also delivers one of the all-time great cutdowns which, while I won’t spoil here, is so marvelously written that it almost rivals Shakespeare himself.
Though McKellan certainly casts his imminent shadow across the film, every performance is All Is True is equally captivating and marvelous. Dench brings her astounding strength to Anne Hathaway, painting a portrait of a strong, captivating woman so often dismissed as just Shakespeare’s wife. Wilder and Wilson, meanwhile, complete with family with nuanced performance that cut to the heart of what living in the shadow of greatness is like.
While not a perfect film, All Is True still manages to be an immensely satisfying one which offers some of the best performances you’ll see this year. It’s almost too bad that they opted for an Oscars qualifying run at the end of last year rather than just wait. That move takes it out of contention for awards next year, a few of which it might have deserved. That miscalculation aside, Branagh has, at the very least, demonstrated why allowing him to do whatever he feels like is usually a pretty good move. Simply put, All Is True is a delight.
All Is True is now playing in select theaters.
