Each time I saw the preview for All Is True, I thought two things. Is that Ben Kingsley playing Shakespeare? No, it is Kenneth Branagh who stars and directs the film. There is no way that I am paying to see a movie about Shakespeare. I will wait until it is available for home viewing. They played the previews so hard that I felt as if I had already seen the movie. This movie needed to be first run on PBS. It is one thing to enjoy Shakespeare’s work and quite another to be interested in him as a person more than theoretically. I enjoy learning about writers in general, but if Shakespeare was alive, I probably would not stalk him in his garden. You have to be a classic theater fan or practitioner, which the leading cast certainly is: Branagh, Judi Dench and Ian McKellan. I am apparently not the only one who thinks this way because I do not recall it being in theaters long.
All Is True is about the last three years of his life from June 19, 1613 through April 23, 1616 after he leaves London and retires home for a quiet life with his family literally haunted by the loss of his only son. When he returns home, he is a fish out of water even among his own family whom he left alone for so long while he supported them doing what he loves. Now he must make peace with a neglected wife, whom Dame Judi Dench plays, and two unhappy daughters while people vie to be his heir before he dies.
I do not regret not seeing All Is True in the theater, but enjoyed it far more than I expected even though it is a bit old fashioned; thus why it feels more appropriate for television than a theater. It feels a little bit like a television series rather than a movie in the way that the family drama unfolds. It has an episodic quality with Shakespeare as the protagonist, but each supporting character gets the spotlight until all the storylines get resolved neatly by the end which is a nice thought, but rarely happens in real life unless you are lucky.
All Is True is satisfying enough to forgive some vanity such as Branagh casting himself as the famous bard. Really? Branagh is good, but Shakespeare good? I hated how everyone was sitting around waiting for him to come home as if they knew exactly when he would and would not be busy making preparations for his homecoming or just the ordinary bustle of a household.
It is easy to forgive Branagh’s excesses when he is so countercultural and lacking in customary movie vanity by casting Dench as Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway, aka Catwoman (just kidding). She is twenty-four years older than Anne was at the time, and while Shakespeare did marry a woman eight years older than him, Dench is twenty-six years older than Branagh. Meanwhile we have Angelina Jolie playing Colin Farrell’s mother, and Glenn Close playing Mel Gibson’s mother. Dench as his wife never felt weird though I felt compelled to look it up to see how far from the mark she actually was. Age blind casting to tip the scales in favor of merit was a wise choice.
All Is True is just as interested in the era as Shakespeare, which gives viewers a taste of what it was like to live in Stratford. A lot of focus is devoted to being a woman during that era, especially an unhappily married one, but the single daughter had her own ax to grind and daddy issues galore. She is probably the supporting character who gets the most decent story arc even if it feels a bit postmodern in its sensibility, but it did not stick out awkwardly from the other subplots whereas her sister’s storyline felt like hastily added afterthoughts. Branagh definitely injects a feminist streak into the proceedings and knocks a little of his innate reverence for Shakespeare off the pedestal by critiquing him for not being able to deal with quotidian realities and solely living in a fantasy world while everyone was hurting around him. You can be the greatest playwright of all time, but it is no excuse for thinking that the way that you see the world is the only version of the truth or that the whole world revolves around you. Paging Emma Thompson.
In an unexpected plot twist, I was most invested in Shakespeare’s relationship with his son-in-law. How are you angling to inherit money that you disapprove of? How dare you?
“Joy to see you dig, sir. At last, given up on your plays to distract the mob from our Lord.”
“Does the lark’s song distract you from your God, John?”
“Of course not. It is evidence of God.”
“Ah. Well, then perhaps for some, I was the lark.”
I absolutely detest how some Christians abhor art or decry anything and everything not explicitly referencing a member of the Trinity as secular and therefore ungodly and not deserving attention or respect. What a joyless world to live in! Even God does not expect us to live solely focused on Him otherwise He would not have created anything but a mirror then drowned in an infinity pool of narcissism. I feel as if Branagh had to personally fight this battle, which is why it resonated with me so much. I hope that the real John Hall was not such a person. In this film, no one likes him so how did he finagle his way into the family without the patriarch’s approval!
Branagh makes the only romantic storyline in All Is True a same sex one; thus McKellan as Shakespeare’s noble, unrequited crush whom he makes a play for one last time. The whole scene is devastating because in spite of Shakespeare’s success, in his little town, he is not remembered for his fame, but taunted for his humble beginnings. His friend and patron keeps reassuring himthat only Shakespeare’s mind and work matter, not blood, only to respond when it counts, “Oh no, baby. You’re a scrub. I’m too good for you.” Branagh’s Shakespeare takes it in stride and even has an extra bit of gumption to put the neighborhood snobs back in their place, but I keep wondering if that last failure would actually be devastating and humiliating. Well, he did write, “Better to have loved and lost” so maybe he would take it in stride.
All Is True is a fictional biography at its most speculative with twenty-first sensibilities injected into the seventeenth century period movie. Branagh may no longer be setting the world on fire, but as the playwright trying to solve the mysteries of his life, which he did not even set out to solve because he did not know that they existed, he makes an interesting biographical reprise to Hamlet except it is the son haunting the father to quiet him from action, not rouse him from his slumber. If you enjoy the cast, Shakespeare, period movies or British movies, definitely check out this film.