All Is True

 All Is True 2018

• Director: Kenneth Branagh
• Other films seen directed by KB: Murder on the Orient Express, Cinderella, Thor, Sleuth, The Magic Flute, As You Like It, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Hamlet, In the Bleak Midwinter, Frankenstein, Much Ado about Nothing, Peter’s Friends, Dead Again, Henry V
• Based on the novel: no
• Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Katherine Wilder
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Kenneth Branagh – Murder on the Orient Express, Dunkirk, Wallander, My Week with Marilyn, The Boat that Rocked, Valkyria, Warm Springs, Shackleton, Harry Potter and the Secret Chambre, Rabbit-Proof Fence, How to Kill Your Neighbour’s Dog, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Wild Wild West, Hamlet, Othello, Frankenstein, Much Ado about Nothing, Swing Kids, Peter’s Friends, Dead Again, Henry V, Fortunes of War
• Judi Dench – Murder on the Orient Express, Victoria & Abdul, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, The Hollow Crown, Bond etc, Hotel Marigold 1&2, Philomena, Vicious, My Week with Marilyn, Jane Eyre, Cranford, Nine, Notes on a Scandal, Mrs Henderson Presents, Ladies in Lavender, The Shipping News, Chocolat, Tea with Mussolini, Shakespeare in Love, Mrs Brown, Hamlet, Henry V, A Handful of Dust, 84 Charing Cross Road, A Room with a View, Macbeth
• Ian McKellen – Vicious, The Hobbit etc, X-Men Days of Future Past etc, King Lear, Extras, Richard III, Cold Comfort Farm, The Ballad of Little Jo, Macbeth
• Katherine Wilder – Ready Player One, Murder on the Orient Express
• Why? Shakespeare
• Seen: 16 January 2021.

             After the Globe burnt to the ground in 1613 Shakespeare returned to his family in Stratford, never to return to London again. Of his life in Stratford in these, his last years, we know little. The film makes very good use of that little and embroiders that into a plausible tale.

       He returns to an aging resentful wife, a long dead son, a daughter who is bitter in her guilt over not being the twin who died, an adulterous daughter married to a strict Puritan.

       Drama, grief, laughter, love and heartbreak, just like a Shakespeare play.

       And you know, of course, that Branagh + Dench + McKellen + Shakespeare can do nothing but  =

  5* of 5, at least