By Jason Osiason
Elsinore is a beautifully shot look at the craft of acting, and I’m genuinely surprised by how much I loved it. On paper, it sounds like exactly the kind of biopic I’d usually dread. An actor dying of AIDS takes over Hamlet at the National Theatre in 1989 after Daniel Day Lewis walks offstage. You can practically picture the entire movie before it starts. The coughing backstage, the long looks in the mirror, the inevitable standing ovation. Thankfully, Simon Stone seems just as aware of those expectations and spends most of the film avoiding them. There’s a real tenderness to his direction, and I loved how little interest he has in turning every painful moment into some grand emotional spectacle.
Andrew Scott plays Ian Charleson, an actor best known for Chariots of Fire who desperately wants to be taken seriously for his work onstage. There’s a confrontation where Charleson demands to be judged for his acting rather than his illness, and I genuinely think it’s one of the most devastating scenes I’ve watched all year. Not because he’s dying, but because he’s furious that everything he’s worked for is being overshadowed by it. He doesn’t want sympathy. He wants respect. Scott is astonishing here, and the way he lets that frustration build without completely losing his composure broke my heart. I was completely floored by how much he could communicate in a single scene.
I also loved how interested Elsinore is in the actual work of putting on a play. The rehearsals, the arguments over lines, the little adjustments that can change an entire performance. Johnny Flynn is wonderful as director Richard Eyre, and I could have watched another hour of these two working through Hamlet. The cinematography is gorgeous, especially in the rehearsal rooms and backstage corridors, but it never gets in the way of the actors. Stone clearly understands that watching talented people work can be just as fascinating as anything happening in their personal lives.
My biggest issue is the ending, which gets a little carried away with montages and sentimentality. After spending so much time letting the performances speak for themselves, the movie suddenly feels the need to underline everything. I found that frustrating because it had already earned its emotional payoff without any of that. Still, I was completely taken with Elsinore. It’s a lovely film about an actor who wanted his work to matter more than his illness, anchored by one of Andrew Scott’s finest performances. I went in expecting something painfully conventional and came away genuinely moved. I really loved this one. [B+]
