Elsinore

Simon Stone’s Elsinore was screened at the Twin Cities Film Fest. It opens theatrically on November 20. 

There’s a surefire way for a film to lose me. It often comes near the end, at the emotional climax, when the filmmaker loses confidence in their story and resolves to tell us how to feel. They resort to a montage of images from powerful scenes earlier in the film, reminding us about the narrative journey we’ve just experienced over the last two hours. The music swells. New footage shows the protagonist with a reflective, all-consuming expression. It’s meant to be an emotional summa of the film, but instead, it’s a lazy cliché that registers as hollow and manipulative. Director Simon Stone and editor Valerio Bonelli deploy this tactic for Elsinore, an otherwise moving drama about Scottish actor Ian Charleson, who fulfilled his dream of playing Hamlet at the Royal National Theatre in London while being treated for AIDS. Charleson is played by Andrew Scott, who earned accolades for his Hamlet at the Almeida Theatre in 2017. Scott delivers one of the year’s finest performances, though the production doesn’t quite match the rawness and authenticity of its lead actor.