All Is True

I have followed Kenneth Branagh’s career ever since I was in high school when, in 1989, he made his directorial debut with Henry V. Branagh was only 29 years old when the film came out and not only did he direct it, but he adapted the screenplay based on Shakespeare’s famous work and starred as the fiery, young king. The production was grounded and accessible, with plenty of mud and blood to make it compelling to a contemporary audience.  As a young, ambitious drama nerd myself, I thought Branagh was the man. Henry V received Oscar nominations for Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Costume Design, although it only won in that last category. The young auteur was compared to Orson Welles and Sir Laurence Olivier, two other wunderkinds from the film and theater world. Since that early, huge success, Branagh’s career has been a fascinating conglomeration of film, tv, and theater work, small and obscure projects shoulder to shoulder with giant mainstream blockbusters, and varying degrees of recognition for his work. Throughout his career of playing private eyes, cops, explorers, Nazis, and drunks, he has always been most closely associated with the figure that brought him all of that early success: William Shakespeare. Besides Henry V, he adapted and/or acted in film versions of Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, As You Like It, Love’s Labor’s Lost, and a word-for-word, nothing-cut, all-four-hours production of Hamlet.

All of this history with the Bard is why his latest film, All Is True, is so interesting. After 30 years of producing Shakespeare on film, Branagh has now actually become him. A very focused bio pic, All Is True tells the story of what became of William Shakespeare after 1613, the year his famous Globe Theater burned to the ground in London and the year that marked the end of his writing career. The film has him returning to his home in Stratford to reunite with his wife and two adult daughters who generally consider him to be a stranger who preferred big city life and fame to them. The story largely centers around the retired playwright’s belated mourning for his son, Hamnet, who died years before. The other major storyline revolves around his efforts to preserve his family’s respectability while simultaneously trying to reconcile after his long absence. Ben Elton’s script takes some pretty major liberties with history, suggesting that Hamnet killed himself because he couldn’t live up to his famous father’s expectations and that his mother and sister covered this up. It also suggests that Shakespeare contracted the fever that eventually killed him while he was out grieving his dead son in the night.

The film is reflective and elegiac. There are a couple of fun moments when we get to see Shakespeare show off his facility with language – once when he scares off a man threatening to smear his daughter’s reputation by telling him tales of a murderous Moor who would kill for her and later when he finally tells off a judgy local nobleman who has been giving him hassle. But for the most part, the story is of a famous, older artist whose body of work is mostly behind him and he is now left to look back and wonder about the sacrifices he had to make in order to attain his success. I’m not saying Branagh made All Is True as some kind of meta-filmic reflection on his own career and relationship to Shakespeare – but I’m also not saying he didn’t.

Branagh is excellent, as are all the performers. Ian McKellen stands out in his cameo as a closeted nobleman and possible lover of Shakespeare’s. The prosthetics and wig used to transform Branagh into Shakespeare border on stagey and distracting, but the film’s overall quality compensates. All Is True is a handsome but maybe overly-meditative film that will please fans of the world’s most famous playwright as well as fans of his most notable contemporary partner.