“It’s all true”: Kenneth Branagh in search of the lost Shakespeare

Taking a break from his successive reincarnations as Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, Branagh made, in the double function of protagonist and director, this “Everything is true”, where he reserved the role of Shakespeare himself, from a much darker perspective than the one the Bard had, through Joseph Fiennes, in “Shakespeare in Love” (1998), the film that disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein made win seven Oscars.

The story of Branagh’s film begins on June 29, 1613, when a fatal shot from a stage cannon caused the total fire of the Globe Theater in London, during the representation of Shakespeare’s last play, “The Life of King Henry”. VIII”, also called “Everything is true”, hence the title of the film. Against the silhouetted shadow of the poet, with his back to the stage, you can see the flames that will reduce the legendary theater to ashes, reopened in 1997 although not exactly in the same place.

According to the script by Ben Elton, an author more devoted to comedy than to drama, Shakespeare returns after that episode to his native Stratford with the intention of dying there, and he does not write another line. His soul has a lot to purge, especially his absence when the death of his only son, Hamnet, died in 1596 for unknown reasons, at age 11. Romantic historiography always linked that first name with that of Hamlet (written between 1599 and 1601), a theory that was later discarded. The film does not deal with that relationship, but it does deal with responding to the real reason for the son’s death. Will it be true? It is not known, but the poet himself is heard saying at one point in the film: “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story”, a phrase that some attribute to Mark Twain, others to an Irish proverb, and others to a prominent Argentine journalist.

In Stratford, family and acquaintances greet Shakespeare with less happiness than suspicion. Her wife, Anne Hathaway, is played by Judi Dench, a remarkable actress but 26 years older than Branagh, when the real Hathaway was only 6 years older than her husband; in fact, in the aforementioned “Shakespeare in Love”, Dench played Queen Elizabeth 26 years ago. Anne’s resentment against her husband is not little; however, the one who shuns her the most is Judith, the eldest of her daughters and Hamnet’s twin, while her youngest, Susanna, is married and suffers from a perverse husband, who only wants her father-in-law’s inheritance.

The film, beautiful in its making, lacks a memorable dramatic richness and even performances, but there is one scene, only one, that not only shines above the rest by contrast but also becomes, in itself, anthological, and it is that of the meeting with the Earl of Southampton, masterfully played by Ian McKellen. That single scene justifies the film.

Supporting the many theories of his biographers about Shakespeare’s bisexuality, the meeting between the two (Southampton, old and tired, traveling to Stratford to pay him honors after learning of his return), materializes in a serene, sparse, sad dialogue, to the one that uses Sonnet 29, which in his youth Shakespeare would have dedicated to the Count: “When men and Fortune abandon me / I cry in the solitude of my exile / and the sky deaf with my complaints I tire / and I curse when looking at my misfortune ( …) Despite the fact that I almost despise myself,/ I think of you and I am happy and my soul then,/ like the lark at dawn, rises/ from the dark earth and sings to the sky:/ because remembering your love is such fortune / that I do not change my status with the kings”. (Translation of M. Mujica Lainez). The different tones, intentions and rhythms that each one gives to the same lines show that, as actors, and as Shakespeare would say, they are made of the stuff of dreams.

“Everything is true” (“All Is True”, GB, 2018). Dir.: K. Branagh. Int.: K. Branagh, J. Dench, I. McKellen (Netflix).

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“It’s all true”: Kenneth Branagh in search of the lost Shakespeare