All Is True

We'd seen this at the cinema and i knew at once that it was the type of film that would go down well if we screened it at our club: the presence of Judi Dench in the cast generally means a good film and also a decent sizes audience.

Seeing it again made me appreciate it even more, particularly Ben Elton's wonderfully autumnal screenplay. It also went don well with our members.

All Is True

UK 2018          97 minutes

Director:          Kenneth Branagh

Starring:            Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench and Ian McKellen

Awards and Nominations

• Won Best Supporting Actress (Judi Dench) at the Movies for Grownups Awards
• Nominations for Best Film, Best Director and Best Supporting Actor (Ian McKellen) at the Movies for Grownups Awards

“Ben Elton has written a sweet-natured, melancholy film about the retirement years of someone he’s lately been turning into his specialist subject: William Shakespeare. The great poet is played here with genial sympathy by the film’s director, Kenneth Branagh, sporting a pretty outrageous false nose. Judi Dench is his wife Anne Hathaway, wearied into resilient impassivity by grief, the unfairness of life and an awful secret. Ian McKellen has a colossal, emphatically wigged cameo as the ageing Earl of Southampton.”

Peter Bradshaw

Following the fire that began during a performance of his play Henry VIII and destroyed the Globe Theatre William Shakespeare (Kenneth Branagh) returns to his family home Stratford upon Avon. His wife Anne (Judi Dench) is still haunted by the death of her only son 17 years earlier, and as Shakespeare struggles to rebuild his broken family relationships and search for inner peace he has to confront the dark heart of his family’s secrets and lies.

The title of the film is the alternate title of Shakespeare’s late play Henry VIII, but the story is most definitely not true: a few key elements of the film reflect the historical record, but others are mere conjecture or even just made up. Prior to writing this screenplay Ben Elton has used the life of Shakespeare as the basis for three series of his witty situation comedy Upstart Crow which included an episode covering the death of Shakespeare’s son. This film is set many years after that death but nonetheless the event drives the action of the plot and there is a distinctly elegiac and autumnal feeling to the way that both William and Anne respond to it and resolve their issues after William’s return to the family home.

Judi Dench was a mentor to Kenneth Branagh at the start of his stage career in the 1980s when she directed him in a number of productions, and in recent years she has performed in several plays that he has produced with his own company. They also appeared together on stage in a production of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus where Branagh played the title role and Dench played his mother. In the cinema Dench had a cameo role in Branagh’s Hamlet (1996), they both appeared in My Week with Marilyn (2011) and more recently Dench appeared in Branagh’s film of Murder on the Orient Express, in which Branagh also starred as Hercule Poirot.

Meanwhile despite his prominent position on the poster Ian McKellen as the Earl of Southampton only appears for a short sequence when he visits Shakespeare at home, although he gives a performance that almost steals the film. When McKellen recently brought his one man show to the Watermill he talked about the making of the film and how strange it was to work with Branagh as both co-star and director: seeing Branagh in costume and make-up in the director’s chair made him feel that he was being directed by Shakespeare himself.

Ben Elton made his name as a stand-up comedian in the 1980s but subsequently has become better known as a writer. In addition to writing for successful TV comedies such as The Young Ones, Blackadder and, more recently, Upstart Crow he has also written 15 novels and several musicals including We Will Rock You and Love Never Dies.

Here is a link to the trailer:

Stan & Ollie

We screened Stan & Ollie towards the end of last year. The film looks back to the early 1950s and to a world that has long since disappeared, but as the days go by it seems that the world we lived in in 2019 has also now disappeared - hopefully not for good.

I missed the film at the cinema, was delighted to see it finally at our film club and was not in the least disappointed by it.

Stan &Ollie

UK 2018          97 minutes

Director:          Jon S Baird

Starring:            Steve Coogan, John C Reilly, Shirley Henderson, Nina Arianda and Rufus Jones

“Like the comedy greats to whom this winningly warm film pays tribute, Jon S Baird’s affectionate drama balances humour and pathos, laughter and tears. Set in Laurel and Hardy’s twilight years, it’s more melancholy love story than slapstick showbiz reminiscence. … Superb headline performances from Steve Coogan and John C Reilly are matched by equally sparkling supporting turns from Nina Arianda and Shirley Henderson as Stan and Ollie’s combative wives, providing what an astute promoter dubs ‘two double acts for the price of one!’”

Mark Kermode

Awards and Nominations

• Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor (Musical or Comedy) (John C Reilly)
• Three BAFTA nominations including Outstanding British Film and Best Actor (Steve Coogan)
• Seven British Independent Film Award nominations including Best Actor (Steve Coogan) and Best Supporting Actress (Nina Arianda)
• A further three wins and eight nominations

In 1953 Stan Laurel (Steve Coogan) and Oliver Hardy (John C Reilly) undertake a gruelling music hall tour around the UK and Ireland as they struggle to raise finance to make another film. As word of their visit spreads their audiences grow and they begin performing in more prestigious venues, including two weeks at the Lyceum Theatre in London, although ill health meant that the tour was the last time that the pair worked together.

Laurel and Hardy made their first film together in 1921, although both were already well established as film actors in their own right, and over the succeeding 30 years made 106 films together. Their films and the characters they portrayed have remained popular with both the general public and serious film fans to this day as Derek Malcolm, a former film critic of the Guardian who as a teenager actually met them on their tour of the UK, recently admitted:

“As someone who met Orson Welles, Luis Buñuel, John Ford, Satyajit Ray, Howard Hawks, Katharine Hepburn, Charlie Chaplin and many others in the course of a long stint as the Guardian’s film critic, I am often asked who was my favourite movie star. The answer is none of them. My favourites are Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Mind you, I was in my mid-teens when I met them, which probably led to the kind of adolescent hero worship I might later have abjured.”

The screenplay is by Jeff Pope who had previously co-written the Oscar-nominated screenplay for Philomena (2013) with Steve Coogan. His previous work for television includes screenplays for Mrs Briggs (2012), Lucan (2013) and Cilla (2014). Jon S Baird has had a varied career as director where his work includes Filth (2013), based on the novel by Irvine Welsh, and episodes of the series Babylon (2014) and Vinyl (2016) which included Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger as executive producers.

Here's the trailer: