No one since the great Laurence Olivier has done more for Shakespeare on film than Kenneth Branagh. He’s directed and starred in a few of the best Shakespeare adaptations, such as Henry V and Hamlet, and has breathed the Bard through theatre, radio, and even the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony. He’s more closely connected to Shakespeare perhaps than any other global personality. And All is True (named for the alternative title of Henry VIII) feels like his denouement, his definitive statement on the most celebrated writer in the English language, as it chronicles Shakespeare’s retirement years in Stratford and his complicated family life with exquisite depth and contemplative serenity.
Following the destruction of the Globe Theatre in 1613, William Shakespeare (Branagh) gives up writing and returns to Stratford to live with his wife Anne Hathaway (Judi Dench), and grown-up daughters Judith (Kathryn Wilder) and Susanna (Lydia Wilson). However, unresolved emotions over the death of his son Hamnet seventeen years earlier and a lack of closeness to his family and home-town result in tensions within his home and community, as he’s forced to examine his life, relationships, and legacy.
All is True is a very dangerous title for a biographical film, as it invites all sorts of added scrutiny as to the legitimacy of its claim. Truth is a major theme of the film, but like a lot of the details of Shakespeare’s life, most of it is supposition and speculation. We don’t know much about how he spent his last years, so most of the specifics of this film are unapologetic extrapolations. One might begrudge the movie for this, but for a key conversation between Shakespeare and one of his admirers, to whom he admits making up a lot of the details of his plays set in foreign lands and historical time periods. Here it becomes clear that All is True is no more meant to be an accurate interpretation of Shakespeare’s final days than Richard III is a factual version of the last years of the War of the Roses. Additional themes that have recurred throughout his work showing up here and his characterization resembling that of figures like Prospero and Lear indicate that the movie is really itself a Shakespearean play about Shakespeare -taking the same liberties that he did in order to convey a greater human truth.
In the mood of this conceit and the sheer drama it yields, I was particularly surprised to learn the movie was written by Ben Elton, one of the great British comedy writers. Shakespeare isn’t new to Elton, having dabbled with the Bard in Blackadder II and his current sitcom Upstart Crow, but I wouldn’t have expected him to write something so sincere and meaningful as this elegiac screenplay. It’s certainly one of his best works. As to Branagh’s direction, it’s much more graceful and subdued than one would expect from him. When you remember the grandiosity of his Hamlet or Much Ado About Nothing, or even more conventional Hollywood movies like Cinderella and Thor, it’s such a sharp contrast to see in this film so much quiet ambience. His camera moves very little, preferring still long takes through various scenes and even holding on shots in meditation for moments after a dialogue has ended. There are a number of candlelit scenes in his home at night that evoke a Caravaggio or Rembrandt painting, yet the art direction is still lush and authentic.
Against all this is Shakespeare himself, and despite Branagh’s obvious love of him, it’s with admirable humility that he allows the film to indulge in Shakespeare’s faults. He was an absent father and, like most men of the period, put too much stock in his male heir, convincing himself that Hamnet was a beautiful, inspired soul to match his own. Branagh plays the stubbornness and frustration well, the unconscious coldness and inability to recognize the misery of his family, and it all amounts to humanizing Shakespeare in a way I’ve never seen another film do. It contrasts the genius playwright with the man, two separate identities, and touches on relatable insecurities and regrets. Nowhere better is this displayed than in a conversation he has with the visiting Earl of Southampton (Ian McKellen), the “Fair Youth” of a couple of Shakespeare’s sonnets, that touches rather boldly on the question of Shakespeare’s sexuality. Indeed the movie finds a way of addressing most of the common speculations around Shakespeare, from his religion and politics to even shrewdly dismissing that anti-Stratfordian nonsense.
In making this film in his late fifties (only a few years older than Shakespeare when he died), and twelve years after his last Shakespearean adaptation, there’s a subtext that can’t entirely be ignored of this movie being about Branagh as much as the Bard. Branagh has had successes and failures just like his subject, he’s had some turbulence in his personal life and relationships, and by virtue of making movies of the plays, he’s been compared to and assessed off of his ability to perform Shakespeare. This movie, like Stratford to London, is smaller and simpler than his recent fare, and has the pastoral elegance of a late-stage swansong. And it’s worth noting that he fills out the cast with RSC alumni, greatest among them an apathetic Dench and a stirringly passionate Wilder, which gives the movie a very theatrical sensibility. He, like Shakespeare, is returning to his roots. I don’t believe Branagh is done though, but much like Kurosawa’s Dreams or Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises, I feel it’ll prove to be the best film he could have gone out on.
All is True may not all be true, but the purpose of the movie is not to nail down a definitive portrait of Shakespeare’s final years as it is to emphasize his humanity and family, and engender a greater rumination on life and loss. It’s a movie with a lot on its mind, much like Shakespeare must have had at the end of his life, and it may well be the best film about Shakespeare the person ever made. Kenneth Branagh has successfully articulated his Shakespeare, he’s taken his bow of the Bard, his revels now are ended.
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