‘Elsinore’ Review: Andrew Scott Is Heartbreakingly Great As AIDS-Stricken Star Determined To Play ‘Hamlet’ – Telluride Film Festival

Scottish-born actor Ian Charleson co-starred in a leading role in the 1981 Oscar-winning Best Picture Chariots of Fire. The next year he had a co-starring role in yet another Best Picture winner, Gandhi. Not bad, but in his heart he was an actor born to the London stage, and as the Hollywood career faded he was frustrated being offered lesser kinds of films and TV roles, or only being known for one movie with an iconic musical theme. By the end of the decade that started with such promise, Charleson was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS at a time when it was difficult as an actor to be honest and share the truth. Although he knew he was dying, he was still full of life with a passion for theater and for living onstage.

Fate intervened, and Daniel Day-Lewis dropped out of the British National Theatre’s production of Hamlet, walking off in the middle of the play. The production’s director knew Charleson’s work well and offered him the part. Aside from a very few people including the director Richard Eyre, no one knew Charleson was doing this role against all odds. Like the theme of a play about choosing life or death, “to be or not to be,” a real-life drama was also playing out in the 24 performances Charleson managed to play despite full-blown AIDS, chemotherapy and a doctor who warned he was killing himself. He would die at age 40 seven weeks after the production ended.

Stephen Beresford had always known Charleson’s inspirational story, talked to many people who were there at the time and knew him, and wrote the screenplay for Elsinore that is not a biopic at all but rather a film about the end of a life, though not the end of living. Director Simon Stone and Beresford have crafted an immensely inspirational and winning film quite unlike most other movies set around the AIDS crisis that took so many young lives. This, like Hamlet, is about staring death in the face and fulfilling a dream not thought impossible.

What Elsinore, which had its world premiere Friday night at the Telluride Film Festival, has above all else is a performance for the ages by Andrew Scott, an actor fully embodying the heart and soul of another actor and finding the emotional center and determination to take this last chance no matter what the cost. It is something Charleson, even at the lowest point of his illness, just had to do, and Scott delivers at every level with a portrayal that is (there is no other word for it) thrilling.

The movie is also a love letter to Britain’s National Theatre, a sprawling monument to the power of art and artists, an “Elsinore” unto itself. Ironically also debuting at the Telluride Film Festival this weekend is the stunning documentary on the history of The National, Into the Breach, featuring interviews with key players from Ian McKellen and Joan Plowright to Eddie Redmayne. Kenneth Branagh, who co-produced, anchors it with a roundtable featuring the likes of Judi Dench, Anthony Hopkins and Gary Oldman.

In no particular order, Elsinore darts in and out of various phases of Charleson’s life during this period, but Stone manages the tonal balance expertly. We see Ian’s interactions with friends and those in the gay community also stricken with AIDS, the deaths of some, his frustration with his stalled career, his mad desire to play Hamlet, his interactions with the medical staff and the key doctor who fought to keep him alive, his parents, the rehearsals, his worsening condition and hospitalization, his remission, and finally the performance. It is also expertly cut (the fine editing is by Valerio Banelli) and keeps the focus on this spirited man tilting at windmills, showing great courage and grit all the way. We also see the unique traditions and importance of The National to the British theater nicely re-created here (Helen Scott is the production designer). And a lip-sync dance of the hospital patients to a cassette of “There’s No Business Like Show Business” from The Ethel Merman Disco Album is worth the price of admission and proof this movie is not the downer it could have been. Instead, it thrives with heart and humanity throughout.

There is a line in the film about the unique power of actors on a stage, a talent that can’t be underestimated, and in the casting of this film that is clear. Scott owns every moment, but he is supported by a tremendous ensemble starting with the great Olivia Colman as Dr. Margaret Johnson, a pioneer in the treatment of AIDS and the doctor who tried to keep it real with Ian but eventually learned it was a losing proposition to fight his dream. Colman is magnificent here getting to the essence of what makes a compassionate healer as she does everything she can to keep Ian alive and able to perform, no matter how dangerous. As his good friend and confidante Patsy Pollock, the person who encourages him to get back onstage but also who knows the cost, Billie Piper is wonderful, as are Peter Mullan as his distraught father; Juliet Stevenson as an empathetic co-star; and Johnny Flynn as Eyre, the director who gives him this opportunity to replace Day-Lewis even after Ian reveals the condition that could make this all a risk.

Luke Thomson as a close dying friend, and Joe Locke as a young patient who idolizes Ian and wants career advice he will never be able to use, are both heartbreaking. David Dawson is superb as the director Derek Jarman. who gave Ian an early break and now chastises him for not going public. They share one of the film’s best-written scenes as Ian explains the role of an actor is to become someone else, not to let their own life turn up onstage.

In the end though it is Scott triumphing here in a film that should make you sad but smartly doesn’t dwell on death, only life as we live it. It is the role of a lifetime playing someone getting the chance to play their role of a lifetime, which is saying a lot since Scott was equally brilliant earlier this year as another real-life person, a reluctant WWII hero, in Pressure. Here he has given Ian Charleson a gift: another moment in the spotlight at the National, this time to share it with the entire world. I would recommend bringing along a value-sized box of tissues. You might need them all.

Producers are Andrea Occhipinti (Lucky Red), Gabrielle Tana (Magnolia Mae Films), Pete Shilaimon (LD Entertainment), Mickey Liddell (LD Entertainment), Stefano Massenzi, Carolyn Marks Blackwood (Magnolia Mae Films) and Scott.

Title: Elsinore
Festival: Telluride
Distributor: Focus Features
Director: Simon Stone
Screenwriter: Stephen Beresford
Cast: Andrew Scott, Olivia Colman, Billie Piper, Johnny Flynn, Peter Mullen, Juliet Stevenson, Matthew Beard, David Dawson, Joe Locke, Luke Thomson
Running time: 1 hr 51 mins