ALL IS TRUE: Blu-ray (Sony Picture Classics, 2019) Sony Home Entertainment

The trailer for Kenneth Branagh’s All Is True (2018) does more than suggest a light-hearted drama in the vein of 1999’s Oscar-winning ‘Shakespeare In Love; albeit from an entirely different perspective, reflecting instead on the waning years of this noble playwright’s life after his career. But in fact, as scripted by Ben Elton, All Is True is a brooding forecast and epitaph, exploring the untimely death of Will’s only son – Hamnet, and Shakespeare’s coming to terms with it after a 1613 production of Henry VIII caused his beloved Globe Theater to burn to the ground in a hellish blaze. Exquisitely photographed by Zach Nicholson, with a sumptuous score by Branagh’s long-time collaborator, Patrick Doyle (whose wife, Abigail, sings the finale, ‘Fear Not’ with tear-wringing affection) All Is True also features a superb cast; costarring Dame Judi Dench as Will’s estranged, though obedient wife, Anne Hathaway; Ian McKellen, in a cameo as the Earl of Southampton and Lydia Wilson and Kathryn Wilder as Shakespeare’s daughters - Susanna and Judith respectively. All Is True has the look of a vintage Merchant/Ivory Picture, but lacks the overall arc in its dramatic scripting to successfully carry things off. We spend the first act in Will’s self-imposed purgatory, having returned to his ancestral home after an absence of some twenty-years; a stranger to his adult daughters, and of only marginal interest now to his aged wife who remained circumspect and silent as to what her place in their relationship has meant to her husband’s reputation, even if he never quite gave hers as ample consideration. For all its formidable talents, its gorgeous scenery, and its lovely score, All Is True is an uneven and dour affair as our Will must analyze and accept what the sacrifices made for his art have cost both sides; chiefly, the opportunity to know each other as worthwhile people.

There are tears to be wrung from the experience of seeing Branagh, one of the greatest actors of any generation, made virtually unrecognizable by uncanny make-up, but rather lowered in his expectations for a well-rounded entertainment, merely going through the motions, playing the part of this depressed and dejected lion in winter. The name Shakespeare, while wildly celebrated elsewhere in the realm, is decidedly not without its consequences in Stratford, where the stain of bigotry haunts his reputation and where indiscretions from his past – either distant or more recently – are never allowed a plot of earth to be buried and quietly forgotten. No, this retreat into relative obscurity will offer no such respite for this weary artist, seeking anonymity in trade for the high-profile public life surrendered to providence. Branagh had already filmed All Is True, with virtually no publicity, before obtaining a distributor in Sony Picture Classics, whose reputation for telling introspective, character-driven dramas in an age of CGI-dominated action drivel, remains a cornerstone for the time-honored traditions of real ‘reel’ art that is both honorable and peerless. That said, All Is True should have been a better movie, Branagh seemingly much too close to the work to realize its unraveling labyrinth in Shakespeare’s personal regrets all but derails any and all of the movie’s legitimate entertainment value.  Branagh’s investment in this thoroughly depressing movie is by no means unique. I have sincerely grown weary of movies that, in their endeavor to remain ‘true to life’ somehow forget that movies can reflect life’s virtues as well as its follies, taking artistic license along the way without sacrificing the integrity of the work. Want reality? – look out any window. Want to be entertained? – go to the movies – or so we used to think. And Branagh knows this, as, in one all too brief scene, he offers us relief from the tragedy unfolding all around him; admonishing Henry (Phil Dunster) – the student of many curiosities, newly arrived and full of questions, only to be repeatedly denied by the most remedial answers, Will, supremely tired of catering to the public’s insatiable ‘need to know’.

Branagh, who was knighted in 2012, and has spent the better half of his career – both on stage and in the movies - interpreting some of Shakespeare’s most celebrated masterworks, including Henry V (1989), Much Ado About Nothing (1993), and, Hamlet (1996), evolves his meditation on Shakespeare – the man – meant to mesmerize more than anesthetize. All Is True is a quiet movie, and at intervals, a deeply disturbing fiction, as very little is known of Shakespeare’s life in general; and most definitely, his last act, shrouded in a great deal of mystery. “I never let the truth get in the way of a good story,” Branagh’s Bard confesses in this movie. And indeed, Branagh and Elton have crafted a divinely-inspired and logical premise on which to hang the movie’s tropes and transparencies about a life whose private view has been overshadowed by a carefully concocted public narrative. The catalyst for Shakespeare’s retirement is the demise of his beloved Globe Theater, scene of his most celebrated stagecraft, now consumed in a hellish fireball during a performance of Henry V (a.k.a. All Is True). Retiring to the relative pastoral safety and intent on becoming a reclusive country squire, Will’s inspiration to write is at an end. He will turn his attentions to a new hobby – gardening; something he knows absolutely nothing about. Galloping across some of the lushest English countryside ever captured on camera, Will comes upon a young boy (Sam Ellis) who pleads with him, as the greatest teller of tales in the English language, to finish his own. Will denies this request and is astonished when the child suddenly disappears into thin air; presumably, a figment of his imagination. Returning home at dusk, Will’s wife, Anne Hathaway, eight years his senior, and having lived apart from her husband for the last twenty or so, dutifully raising their daughters, Susanna and Judith, treats his return now with matter-of-fact authenticity. As they have not lived as man and wife, she sets him up in the guest bedroom. Will’s eldest, unwed, and – at twenty-eight – considered past her prime, Judith, harbors a deep-seeded resentment of her father’s absence. Her twin, a brother, Hamnet, died some years ago, age eleven, while Will was writing The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Despite their rather aloof attitude, the Shakespeares are having a rough time of things.  Will’s youngest, Susanna is publicly denounced as a whore for cheating on her husband, Jon Hall (Hadley Fraser). Full of political ambitions, Hall thusly keeps Judith at a respectable distance. On the other hand, Judith is being romantically pursued by Tom Quiney (Jack Colgrave Hirst) – a fine match, until, literally on the day of their wedding, it is discovered another woman, Margaret Wheeler (Eleanor de Rohan) has died giving birth to his stillborn son. Jon arrives to deliver this news with Margaret’s fresh blood upon his hands and vest. But the biggest mystery surrounds the death of Will’s only son, Hamnet, whom he had been told by Anne was one of many victims of the plague. Alas, when Will checks the public records, he finds no documentation on such a pestilence having swept through the village. As it is a certainty no plague ever personally selected households on a door to door basis, Will implores Anne to divulge the truth about Hamnet to him. But no – she protests, and insists; Hamnet died of influenza. Judith, however, knows the truth. And, as her heart has softened towards Will after wedding Tom, Judith now confesses Hamnet went to his favorite place, the pond near their home with sonnets Will believed were written by him – but actually, were Judith’s – to commit suicide in order to conceal his shame for having lied to his father about their origins. Liberated from his purgatory, the boy Will first encountered at the start of the movie, returns to him now. It is Hamnet, who politely thanks him for having ‘finished’ his story. The garden Will began upon returning home, now blossoms as the family draws nearer his side; their collective sorrow abated. The movie’s epitaph reveals Will died at home barely three years later, age 52; that Judith bore three sons by Tom – all, prematurely dead in their youth, and finally, Susanna’s only daughter, felled by plague, died, age 61, without continuing the family bloodline.

All Is True is bittersweet and melancholy to the point where fanny-twitching suicidal tendencies begin to shine unpleasantly from the peripheries of the screen. Ian McKellen makes a wonderfully welcomed – if all too brief – entrance as the Earl of Southampton.  Here is a very concrete reminder to Will of the good ole days with a faint whiff of hope and promise for the future. The relationship between Southampton and Shakespeare is curious, indeed – bromantic, to the point where one might almost consider them as lovers. Still, it is a joyful reunion, one, initially scoffed at by Anne, who confronts Will with rumors of his many dalliances in London – for whom Shakespeare is supposed to have composed his sonnets. She reminds him that, while his public image was always paramount in her duties to him as wife and mother to their children, he likely never gave her reputation even an ounce of as much consideration. The shame Branagh and Elton express for the follies of Will’s youth is potent and, on occasion, cringe-worthy, intermittently compounded by the high praise Will continues to receive from strangers, who judge him favorably with their meaningless, sycophantic hero-worship. Ah, but only Will knows he is not without flaws. Yet, who among us has not the chapter or two we would rather not have committed to the tapestry of our lives? Here is a man – imperfect, though no less inspired – reduced for his past indiscretions by the only woman who truly understands and remains tolerant of his infamy, as accepting of her ‘place’ until the end of their time together.

As played by Dame Judi Dench, Lady Anne Hathaway is very much the moral compass of the family without ever having to gesticulate in broad mannerisms from a soapbox. Dench’s magisterial Anne is compassionate, although stern; hard, yet oddly gentle when the moment requires her pain to slip, perhaps just a little, but enough to reveal tender wounds inflicted by a lifetime of devotion to a man arguably unworthy of her many great sacrifices. In its final moments, All Is True reflects gently – even quaintly - on a far more disturbing solemnity afforded a great artist in his twilight. Shakespeare died in 1616, barely 3 years after the events depicted here, and, at the age of 52, still contemplatively tormented by conscience. Branagh, to have spent his lifetime plumbing the depths of Shakespeare’s craft, has found enough here to paint an earthly and troubling portrait of the price of greatness. I just wish he and Elton had understood more the fundamental of ‘drama.’  Drama is not what happens when the actor suffers, but when the audience relates to the plight of his character and truly feel intensity empathy for that fictional alter-ego. Despite lavish prosthetics, to have rendered Branagh virtually unrecognizable at a glance, but simultaneously taking on a rather cartoonish flavor a la a Bugs Bunny caricature, Branagh has poured body and soul into every last frame. And yet, miraculously, given the caliber of his performance, it somehow is never enough.

Although Branagh has done formidable research here, All Is True takes certain artistic liberties worth noting. First, Shakespeare’s departure after the fire at the Globe, did not put a period to his authorship. Also, in this movie, John Lane (Sean Foley) a parishioner in Shakespeare’s church, accuses Susanna of adultery after having followed her to the home of her lover, Rafe Smith (John Dagleish). While Lane’s allegation did occur, Susanna suing Lane for slander in 1613, Lane never claimed first-hand knowledge of the affair – if, indeed, one had occurred. Susanna won her suit and Lane was excommunicated from the church. Also, the 3rd Earl of Southampton, while one of Shakespeare’s most ardent patrons was certainly not ‘acquainted’ in friendship with the Shakespeares, and would not have deigned to entertain a member from any household not of his own social caste. Aside: the movie also depicts fellow playwright, Ben Jonson (Gerald Horan) to have visited Will in his later years. Although there is no proof of this reunion either, it is more plausible, since Jonson admired Will greatly as his contemporary and was, perhaps, even a little envious of Shakespeare’s preeminence in English theater.  

As regarding Southampton – debate rages on, that Shakespeare’s sonnets were, in fact, homoerotic odes to the Earl, extoling a relationship between both men from their youth. This is hinted to in the movie also. However, in reality, nothing concrete exists to either prove or disprove this rumor. Regarding Thomas Quiney, All Is True suggests Will wrote his son-in-law into his estate, but then removed all references to his inheritance after Thomas was exposed for having fathered Margaret’s child. While Quiney did not benefit for Shakespeare’s estate after the Bard’s death, the question remains; did Will remove Quiney as heir out of spite or necessity predicated on the social pressures of the times? Perhaps we will never know for certain, although Shakespeare clearly favors Quiney in the movie, who is presented as a rather congenial fellow, as opposed to Hall, who is an arrogant prig.  Lastly, one of the bombshell revelations in All Is True is the puncturing of Will’s believe Hamnet possessed his gifts for literary ‘wit and mischief’ when, in reality, the poems written in his hand were dictated to him by Judith expressing her creativity. This hinges on Judith’s lingering guilt, that perhaps Hamnet committed suicide out of shame for having deceived their father. In truth, no record exists that any of Shakespeare’s children were either ‘gifted’ in the literary arts or, in the case of either daughter, even literate, as girls were not permitted to receive formal education then.

All Is True arrives on Blu-ray from Sony Home Entertainment in a stunning 1080p presentation, surely never to disappoint. Exquisitely photographed by Zac Nicholson, every last ounce of detail in each immaculately composed shot is present and accounted for with crystal clarity and an abundance of brightly colored hues that startle as much as they immensely please the eye. While one may debate the dramatic impetus of the picture, All Is True is a visual feast for the eye with many scenes, exquisitely lit by candlelight alone. Blacks are deep, rich and velvety. Flesh tones are excellent. Contrast is bang-on perfect. A light smattering of grain appears indigenous to its source. The 5.1 DTS audio is subtly referenced with well-placed dialogue and effects, and, showing off Patrick Doyle’s gentle underscore to its best advantage. Extras include a junket on the making of the movie, a conversation with Branagh and Elton about the movie’s conception, deleted scenes, and, an interminable array of trailers for other Sony Picture Classic releases – many, inexplicably only being given a DVD and Digital release. Folks, it is almost 2020. Can we all just agree that if any video format needs to be retired in this age of 4K televisions, it is DVD and NOT Blu-ray. Dumb decision on Sony’s part. Really dumb!!! Bottom line: All Is True is a bit of a downer. The peaks and valleys of a well-scripted drama are absent here. What we do get is one on-going descend into the smallness and uncertainty of a normal life. Does it work? Not altogether, as one desperately craves those brief – if wholly orchestrated - respites from such dark despair. But no – All Is True is a very bleak affair. This Blu-ray is pitch perfect and will surely not disappoint. Judge and buy accordingly.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

3

VIDEO/AUDIO

5+

EXTRAS

3