TIFF review: Simon Stone’s Elsinore is so unimaginative and exploitative that it sucks the verve out of Andrew Scott’s performance

Andrew Scott is a very good actor, no one doubts that. He has in Elsinorea quasi-biographical film about Scottish actor Ian Charleson in what is set to be the role of a lifetime. Sure, Scott puts all his heart and talent into his performance, but the film around him is so unimaginative and, worse, borderline exploitative, that it sucks the verve out of Scott’s performance. Written by Stephen Beresford and directed by Simon Stone. Elsinore documents the end of Ian Charleson’s life as he appeared in two dozen plays Hamlet for the National Theater of England, dying from complications of HIV/AIDS.

Ian’s big break came in 1981. Chariots of Firebut by 1989 he was mainly known as a stage actor. His film career stalled in the 1980s, although he continued to work in theater throughout the decade. He is also a closeted gay man and contracted HIV/AIDS at a time when the disease was still deeply stigmatized. He’s 40, he’s dying, and Daniel Day-Lewis has just left a National Theater production. Hamlet in the middle of the run. Seeing his chance, Ian accepts the role offered by director Richard Eyre (Johnny Flynn), although his doctor Margaret Johnson (Olivia Colman) advises him not to act in the play, as the intense role will ruin what little remains of his health.

Ian does it anyway. Richard knows the truth about Ian’s diagnosis, but no one else does. Facial swelling from septicemia is attributed to sinus surgery, and his injuries and bouts of vomiting are hidden from the cast, crew, and audience. Ian handles the challenging role even as he quickly fades, and Scott displays a determination that oscillates between grim as Ian sees this as his last chance to save his legacy as an actor and wholesome as he overcomes his deteriorating condition to deliver the performance he knows he has in him.

What is important, however, is that Ian does not reveal or admit the truth about his illness while he is alive. He argues with his former lover, director Derek Jarman (David Dawson), who is himself gay and publicly identified as having HIV/AIDS. The two men can’t agree on whether Ian should take the stage in his final days, but in Beresford’s best writing in the film, neither is entirely right or entirely wrong. Derek is right that the queer and HIV/AIDS community would benefit from knowing about Ian, but Ian is right that his whole life will be about his illness at a time when he is trying to be remembered for something else.

There’s a version somewhere Elsinore it matches Scott’s performance, matches his ferocity and pays tribute to Ian Charleson (at the time Ian McKellan called him “the perfect Hamlet”). This is not the same version of the film. Elsinore instead, he plays to the lowest common denominator, throwing all the balls around Scott abruptly and abandoning his truly touching performance amid a sea of ​​mediocrity (Scott is gay and undoubtedly recognizes the links in the chain that he and Charleson represent, the strange actor who died in lockdown and, 40 years later, the strange actor who finds success on stages and screens around the world while still living his life as himself).

Elsinore becomes a disease, presenting Ian’s decaying body as a spectacle, pinpricks lingering on the lesions, blood and vomit. And the lighting is terrible, flat, dim and gray, washing out the film in a way that is probably meant to depict death but directly belies the intensity of Scott’s passion-filled performance. Scott plays Ian not as a victim, but as a man digging deep to do the one thing he knows he can do better than any other, with the full and terrible knowledge that this is his last chance to do it. However, the film portrays Ian as if he was stuck in a tawdry Oscar bait ten, twenty, thirty years ago. Scott tries to do more, but Elsinore doesn’t meet him where he is.

And worse! Ian’s legendary performance as Hamlet, considered by many to be one of the greatest of all time, is overshadowed by a choppy montage at the end of the film. The whole point Elsinore it’s a 24-show of Ian as Hamlet and all we get is a terrible remix, as if someone stuck all the footage of Scott as Ian as Hamlet in a blender and hit “soup”. The bare minimum Elsinore What I can do is give us one great moment when Scott performs Ian in Hamlet to understand the scale of Ian’s performance, which can never be seen again because no recording exists.

Andrew Scott is trying to memorialize Ian Charleson’s legendary performance, but his director (and editor Valerio Bonelli) are working directly against him. Elsinore This is a huge missed opportunity. Andrew Scott plays with all his heart and his acting is very, very good, but there’s no getting around how flat and uninteresting it is Elsinore around him.

Elsinore will play exclusively in theaters from November 20, 2026.