A Kenneth Branagh’s historical drama with a star-studded cast has just been added to a new streaming platform in the UK. Released in 2018, the period drama All Is True chronicles the later years of playwright William Shakespeare as he comes to terms with the death of his son, Hamnet.
Branagh stars as Shakespeare, with Judi Dench as his wife Anne Hathaway, with whom he has a fraught relationship, and Ian McKellen as the Bard’s patron, the Earl of Southampton. Lydia Wilson plays Shakespeare’s eldest daughter, Susanna, while Kathryn Wilder stars as Judith, Hamnet’s twin.
Written by Ben Elton, All Is True is now available to watch on BBC iPlayer.
The film received critical acclaim upon release, earning a score of 73% on Rotten Tomatoes out of 142 reviews. Critics praised the humanising portrayal of the legendary playwright, as Rolling Stone deemed the film “a mesmerizing meditation on Shakespeare’s last days”.
“Director-star Kenneth Branagh shuns the idea of the Bard as a literary rock star to find the flawed, touchingly human man inside,” the review reads.
Elsewhere, Empire called All Is True “a quiet and meditative portrait of the artist as a retiree”, adding: “This lacks incident or high stakes but has an elegiac feeling of regret and reckoning that fits its subject’s twilight years.”
The New York Times also celebrated the joint effort of Branagh and Elton, writing: “Between them, [they] have concocted a respectful story of loss, regret and wistful genius.”
Meanwhile, Slate slammed the film as “an overstuffed mess” and Variety argued it struggled to find a target audience as “a revisionist fiasco”.
“The result is a revisionist fiasco, too dense with Shakespeare allusions for casual moviegoers, and too fast and loose with the facts for those who know a thing or two about the man,” read the review.
Also looking at Shakespeare’s relationship with his son is Chloé Zhao’s upcoming Hamnet, starring Jessie Buckley as Agnes and Paul Mescal as the poet.
The film adapts the novel of the same name by Maggie O’Farrell, who co-wrote the script with Zhao, and focuses on the strained relationship between Agnes and William following the death of their son.
