Elsinore (dir. Simon Stone)

By: Adam Freed

Be it a pure coincidence or simply evidence of the lasting permanence of the works of William Shakespeare, for the second awards season in a row, the most emotionally evocative film of the year is one that surrounds a production of Hamlet.  Just as Chloë Zhao’s masterpiece Hamnet (2025) used The Bard’s master work as a sublime tool for processing grief, Director Simon Stone (The Dig, The Daughter) hoists the true-to-life story of British actor Ian Charleson, Elsinore, as a pertinent reminder that the value of life exists within the way it is not lived, regardless of how long it is lived.  Charleson, famously replaced Daniel Day-Lewis in the title role of Hamlet on the Olivier stage at England’s National Theatre, the central focus of the film’s conflict.  While this type of actor swap is far from uncommon, it was the fact that Charleson did so while privately in the midst of a courageous battle against HIV/AIDS. The glory of Elsinore, a film that earns its title after the name of Hamlet’s castle, is that it is not a conventional biopic or repackaged Hamlet interpretation. Instead, Stone's masterful cinematic achievement is an  exploration of what it means to be human: to empathize, to feel, to lie, to atone, to heal, to learn to live with grace.  Or, more famously, “to be, or not to be, that is the question” facing a man with an incurable infection, despite his immeasurable thirst for life.  In short, Elsinore is a celebration of life with a welcome acknowledgment that it cannot be lived forever.

With the same artistic courage required of Charleson to take on the part of Hamlet as his health deteriorated, Andrew Scott (All of Us Strangers, Pressure) fills out his superb depiction of Charleson with a surplus of hope, courage, and fire, rather than as the sympathetic deterioration of a great man. The truth is that Elsinore soars because of the life breathed into it by Scott’s performance, one that should instantly consider the star at the front of the Academy race for best actor.  With the grace and pensive precision of a panther, Andrew Scott seamlessly navigates between two diametrically opposed worlds.  One, with London’s highest regarded theater company, in which Charleson is in complete command of his environment, his preparation and ultimately his performance.  The second, a more unfamiliar world in which he finds himself in the care of revolutionary immune disease expert, Doctor Margaret Johnson.  Johnson captured with the confidence one would expect from Olivia Coleman (The Favourite, The Lost Daughter), and another of the world’s most unimpeachable screen actors.  Scott plays Ian Charleson as a man desperate to face Hamlet, as it represents the Mount Everest of roles, a part the actor is all but certain will be his last.

It cannot be understated that Elsinore is not for the faint of heart.  Simon Stone’s courageous portrait of late 80’s London life, an age in which the LGBTQ community was treated as though they had leprosy, save for a heroic few medical caregivers with noble conviction to uphold their Hippocratic oaths. Elsinore is not visually bombastic or audaciously presented as is often the case in 80s period films.  Instead Stone chooses to gravitate towards the understated, a tactful decision that allows Andrew Scott’s career-defining tour de force the room to breathe and grow as the film evolves.  There have been numerous films about the HIV/AIDS epidemic, just as there have been countless theatrical releases that have called upon Hamlet as source material, but none have ever captured the essence of both so brilliantly and so conclusively.

Target Score 9/10 - Elsinore is a devastatingly beautiful depiction of gifted British actor Ian Charleson’s final crowning achievement. Simon Stone’s film is both an ode to the power of the performing arts as well as a conclusive demonstration of the gravity of his star Andrew Scott.

Elsinore is included in Movie Archer’s coverage of the 62nd Chicago International Film Festival