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:

The Wars of the Roses

Over the past week I've finally managed to catch up with the brilliant BBC adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry VI and Richard III plays, ie The Wars of the Roses.

I've seen Richard III several times (with Anthony Sher, Ian McKellen and Kevin Spacey playing the king): each was brilliant in very different productions: traditional, a fascist 1930s, and mid-Atlantic. However these were standalone productions and it is only when you see how Richard develops over the three parts of Henry VI that you can fully understand all the historical background. Having also recently visited Laycock Abbey which was used as a location it was interesting to see how well it worked on screen.

It was no surprise to discover that Benedict Cumberpatch was brilliant in the lead role, but the production had casting in depth with Judi Dench and many other superb actors in supporting roles.

However having watched it at a time when news of the US presidential elections is flooding media as I watched the plays I began to see a strange and unexpected counterpoint to the drama. And then this morning I read this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/09/opinion/sunday/shakespeare-explains-the-2016-election.html?_r=0

Years ago I read a book called Shakespeare Our Contemporary while studying A Level English. Now I know that Shakespeare will always be our contemporary.

Mr Holmes

It's been a bit of a year, and I'm hopelessly behind in posting my notes for the films we have screened.

Way back at the end of January we showed Mr Holmes: Ian McKellen as an ageing Sherlock Holmes. While I enjoyed both the film and his performance, the whole entity did not work for me. I've read too many of Conan Doyle's stories to accept the basic set up of the film. and the long shadow of the BBC's brilliant Sherlock looms large over any attempt to make any film about Sherlock Holmes.

Here are my notes:

Mr Holmes

UK 2015                      103 minutes

Director:                      Bill Condon

Starring:                        Ian McKellen, Laura Linney, Milo Parker, Hiroyuki Sanada and Hattie Morahan

Awards and Nominations

• Five nominations for Ian McKellen  as Best Actor
• A further four nominations

“Like its eponymous hero, the film drifts in and out of focus as it sifts through its deck of memories, a touch broad here, a little undercooked there, sometimes satirical, more often whimsical. Yet Jeffrey Hatcher’s script neatly ties together the interplay between myth and memory – both unreliable and malleable – while McKellen nurtures his character’s changing nature with affection and grace.”

Mark Kermode

After retiring to the South Downs and taking up bee-keeping an elderly Sherlock Holmes (Ian McKellen) is looked after by his housekeeper Mrs Holmes (Laura Linney) and her young son.  As his health declines and he begins to lose his memory he reviews the two cases that made him retire from his role as a consulting detective.

Despite a long, award-winning career on the national stage that began in 1965 Ian McKellen’s screen rolls were for a long time limited to TV and/or specific British films like Richard III (1995), a screen adaptation of the acclaimed National Theatre production that moved the action of the play to a fascist 1930s. It was not until he secured an Oscar nomination for best actor for his portrayal of James Whale in in Gods and Monsters (1998), Bill Condon’s breakthrough film as director, that his international film career began.  Since then his roles as an Oscar nominated Gandalf in Peter Jackson’s two Tolkien trilogies and Magneto in the ongoing X-Men series have meant that he currently stands at 14 in the top 20 of the highest grossing actors in the USA (based on the box office takings of the films in which he has starred) and well ahead of long-established stars such as Robert de Niro and Matt Damon.

Bill Condon started his film career as a scriptwriter for independent films before becoming a director. His screenplay for Gods and Monsters won him an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay and he subsequently wrote the Oscar nominated screenplay for Chicago (2002) His subsequent films as director have included Kinsey (2004) and the musical Dreamgirls (2006), for which he also wrote the screenplay, as well The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Parts 1 and 2, the final films of the lucrative vampire franchise. He is currently working on a film version of Beauty and the Beast, a film version of the Disney stage musical starring Emma Watson and Dan Stevens - with Ian McKellen as Cogsworth (a character who has been transformed into a pendulum clock).

Here's the trailer: