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As an actor and director, Kenneth Branagh has presented several works of Shakespeare for cinematic consumption, bringing flair, passion, humor and a bit of randy action to plays like Much Ado About Nothing  and Henry V.  And like his Bard-loving predecessor, Sir Laurence Olivier , Branagh has run the gamut from Hamlet to ham. Unless you count his take on Frankenstein, Branagh has yet to fully commit to the lovely depths of trashiness that Sir Larry O. plundered. While I eagerly wait for him to breathe life into some dismal Harold Robbins smut, I must settle for his crafty bit of meta-casting in “All Is True.” After taking on several of his plays, Branagh now takes on Shakespeare himself.

Aided by more than a little makeup and a history bending script by one-half of the duo who created the immortal “Blackadder,” Branagh’s Bard is an unexpectedly subdued performance. Shakespeare suffers the kinds of neuroses that plague every writer, except he’s taken up gardening rather than booze to ease his pain. Branagh doesn’t chew the scenery; he mows it in widescreen compositions that are quite often lush and comforting. Shakespeare will never win any awards for his lawn nor will his garden blossom like his prose, but this drudgery gives him something to do.

Writer Ben Elton spins this film’s speculative yarn during the last years of Shakespeare’s life, of which the opening titles tell us not much is known. We do know, however, that in June of 1613, the Globe Theater burned to the ground in London. As “All Is True” opens, Branagh juxtaposes his character against a screen filled with raging fire, visually casting him into the scorching Hell that is writer’s block. Without the theater where his greatest works premiered, Shakespeare has lost his way with words. Vowing to never write again, he returns to Stratford-upon-Avon where his wife Anne Hathaway ( Judi Dench ) has been holding down the fort in his absence.

Anne seems rather exasperated to see him—she’s gotten on quite well with an absentee husband—but she welcomes him back home. Shakespeare is also reunited with his daughters Susannah ( Lydia Wilson ) who is married and Judith ( Kathryn Wilder ), who is not. Anne offers her husband her bed, because “a guest deserves the host’s best bed.” Anne will not occupy it with him; instead she’ll take the “second best bed” in the house. Later in the film, when he’s updating his will, Shakespeare leaves Anne that second best bed as an in-joke between the two of them.

I know what you’re thinking: This is going to be one of those biopics where all sorts of ridiculous coincidences will beget well-known details about that person’s life or their art. “All Is True” bypasses that cliché trap with its timeframe. Besides, the film has other “ Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story ”-worthy sins to commit, starting with the tragic figure who haunts the main character. Shakespeare is tormented by the death of his son Hamnet, whom he thought would pick up his writer’s mantle and continue his legacy. We see Hamnet several times offering his dad the latest poems he has written. Meanwhile, Shakespeare’s relationship with Hamnet’s twin, Judith is strained because, you guessed it, the wrong kid died. Judith even says this line in the movie, leading me to curse Dewey Cox for what he hath wrought.

Branagh doesn’t let you get too focused on predictable things like this—he’s running some equally distracting counter-programming at the same time. Judith’s constant snark evokes MTV’s Daria and her rivalry with her sister has more than a bit of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” about it. Unless Judith can offer a male heir for her father to leave his inheritance, she’ll basically be out-of-luck. Meanwhile, Lydia is married to the dull type of Puritan who’s more adept at burning theaters than fanning the flames of sexual passion. Still, they have kids and Judith does not, which puts her at a disadvantage.

“All is True” also wants to delve into the societal roles for women in Elizabethan times. We spend just as much time with Shakespeare’s women as we do with him. While Lydia gets her freak on outside her marriage, Judith seethes at her father as he mopes about lamenting his dead son. Wilder really makes you feel the hurt underneath her moments of lashing out, so much so that Shakespeare becomes a somewhat villainous representation of how little his era valued women.

Anne seems to be the only one comfortable with her life and her delusions. When the truth comes out about Hamnet’s death and his poetry, Anne digs in her heels about the lie she agreed upon telling. Branagh’s framing of this scene, wherein he is dwarfed in the background between Anne and Lydia, is as powerful as Dench’s acting. Say what you want about his onscreen vices, but Branagh has always been a charitable director and it really shows here.

But make no mistake, this is still the same guy who went full-on operatic in the massively entertaining “ Dead Again .” Just when it feels like the Bard really doth protest too much about his misery, the film gets a major injection of juicy theatrics courtesy of Sir Ian McKellen . Like Branagh, McKellen is no stranger to the Bard nor is he unfamiliar with dousing his performance with figurative pork products. Sir Ian plays the Earl of Southampton, who has come to visit Shakespeare while in town on other business. This is the guy to whom the Bard supposedly wrote those sonnets. McKellen is delectably foppish, showing up like Edward Everett Horton disguised as an old theater queen. With his thick mustache and  outrageous Scarlet Pimpernel wig, he throws enough shade to cover three rooms of windows.

Shakespeare really lusts for the Earl, but the Earl basically says “you’re not regal enough for these goodies.” In a botched attempt at seduction, Shakespeare recites Sonnet 29 in its entirety. You know the one: “When in disgrace, with fortune and men’s eyes” and so on. Branagh digs into the recitation, reminding us of his prowess in matters of the Bard. After the Earl rejects Shakespeare's advances, he also recites the sonnet to show the Bard that his feelings might have been requited if he were royalty. Not to be outdone, McKellen gives the sonnet a completely different, though no less spectacular reading. As far as acting battle royales go, this is one for the books.

“I never let the truth get in the way of a good story,” Shakespeare tells us. Purists may have a field day with “All Is True,” and it does have a tendency to lag, but I found myself thinking about it days after I’d seen it. Like the superior Emily Dickinson vehicle “Wild Nights With Emily,” it bypasses the worthy immortal regard earned by the writer’s works and lets us see the humanity—and the drama—beneath that surface.

Odie Henderson

Odie "Odienator" Henderson has spent over 33 years working in Information Technology. He runs the blogs Big Media Vandalism and Tales of Odienary Madness. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire  here .

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Film Credits

All Is True (2019)

Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, suggestive material and language.

101 minutes

Kenneth Branagh as William Shakespeare

Judi Dench as Anne Hathaway

Ian McKellen as Henry Wriothesley

Kathryn Wilder as Judith Shakespeare

Jack Colgrave Hirst as Tom Quiney

Matt Jessup as Frank

Lydia Wilson as Susanna

Alex MacQueen as Sir Thomas Lucy

Hadley Fraser as John Hall

• Kenneth Branagh

Cinematographer

• Zac Nicholson
• Úna Ní Dhonghaíle
• Patrick Doyle

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‘All Is True’ Review: Regret Is the Thing, as Shakespeare Comes Home

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By Jeannette Catsoulis

• May 9, 2019

With some movies, it’s best not to allow worries over historical accuracy to derail our enjoyment. And there’s plenty to enjoy in “All Is True,” Kenneth Branagh ’s fondly poignant look at William Shakespeare’s final years.

Not much is known about that time, after the playwright’s beloved Globe Theatre burned to the ground in 1613 and he returned to his family home in Stratford-upon-Avon. It’s not a peaceful retirement. Reconnecting with his neglected wife (Judi Dench, brilliantly huffy) and two variously troubled daughters (Kathryn Wilder and Lydia Wilson) is challenging, to say the least. But if Ben Elton’s screenplay benefits from dramatic imaginings and factual fudging, I’m content that Branagh — who stars as well as directs and whose devotion to Shakespeare is inarguable — be the one to approve them.

The result is more country soap than biopic, a slow and soothing tale of family secrets and festering resentments. A little soppy and a tad dull — Will putters constantly in the garden, mourning the long-ago death of his young son — the movie is so sedately paced that Branagh’s distracting prosthetic nose can seem to enter scenes well before the rest of him.

Yet while “All Is True” might not brim with excitement, it’s beautifully acted, richly photographed (by Zac Nicholson) and blessedly free of histrionics. Between them, Branagh and Elton have concocted a respectful story of loss, regret and wistful genius. Their Shakespeare is sad and a little weary, but far from beaten down, evidenced by the movie’s most pleasurable scene: An extended fireside chinwag between Will and his longtime crush, the Earl of Southampton (a wicked Ian McKellen). Whether all is true here is irrelevant: just watching these two old hands lovingly quote Sonnet 29 together feels right enough for me.

Rated PG-13 for heterosexual scandal and homoerotic longing. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes.

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All Is True review – Kenneth Branagh and Ben Elton’s witty Bard biopic

T his witty collaboration between Kenneth Branagh and writer Ben Elton imagines William Shakespeare’s final years in Stratford-upon-Avon, focusing in particular on his relationships with his two daughters and deceased son, Hamnet, who died at the age of 11. Branagh casts himself as the beloved “Will” (of course), playing him with a convincingly world-weary edge, while Judi Dench stars as his wife, Anne Hathaway (English literature nerds may enjoy the references to their “second best bed”). I like Branagh’s eye for landscapes too; space is used elegantly, while widescreen canvases glow green and orange.

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All Is True Reviews

One of the greatest virtues of this film is the intensity that drives the editing of the picture from the very beginning. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Jul 25, 2022

Though much of the film is mere speculation on what the last years of Shakespeare's life may have been like, it is in those extraordinary high points in the film that "All Is True" really does ring true.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Jun 14, 2022

A sumptuous film about grappling with joy and sorrow.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Aug 15, 2021

Dench joins Branagh and McKellen in solidifying the genius of their movie's lead character.

Full Review | Jul 23, 2021

Even leaving aside the "playful" and empty postmodernist ambiguities ... Branagh's All Is True falls down in its approach to Shakespeare's life and to historical development.

Full Review | Feb 10, 2021

It is a diverting, fitfully thought-provoking look at Shakespeare at a point in his life that many of us may not be aware of, powered by a sense of poignancy and exceptional performances across the board.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 28, 2020

This is a joyously overwrought and theatrical movie, which finds its best moments when it deals in ripe, gently bawdy dialogue.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 16, 2020

Engulfed in bitter sadness and sweet sentimentality which, at times, loses itself to overwhelming grief.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 13, 2020

This era's paragon of Shakespeare performers is able to take All is True to a new realm and humanize an iconic historical figure.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Jan 10, 2020

Branagh's pacing, intended as idyllic I guess, is glacial... That said, the acting is magnificent, from Dench and McKellan and the other supporting players, but above all from the star.

Full Review | Jan 7, 2020

It's almost like Shakespeare wrote this movie.

Full Review | Sep 13, 2019

Kenneth Branagh transforms into Shakespeare and delivers one of the best films of his career. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 8, 2019

While the themes might be hammered home too much at times, they are still compelling and interesting, and hammered home by some incredible actors, decked out in gorgeous costumes and more wigs than an episode of RuPaul's Drag Race.

Full Review | Sep 5, 2019

All Is True ultimately has more in common with The Real Housewives of Atlanta than with The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 31, 2019

Sir Kenneth Branagh's All is True is a splendid little treat for Shakespeare fans, especially for those who've always wanted to know a little more about the man himself.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 27, 2019

Ben Elton's well-researched and cleverly built script offers plenty of delights for fans of the Bard, further enhanced with Branagh's fine direction and its wonderful cast.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 29, 2019

An intriguing take on Shakespeare's final days.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4.0 | Jun 20, 2019

The movie's impressive appearance notwithstanding, Shakespeare's domestic problems do not a classic make.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 19, 2019

Honestly there were times when it seemed a half step away from a Monty Python or Blackadder sketch

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10 | Jun 16, 2019

"Macbeth" and "King Lear" didn't exactly stick to the historical record either, and Ben Elton's speculative screenplay finds poignancy and wit in this unauthorized and unexpected portrait of Shakespeare.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 14, 2019

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All is True review: A boldly fanciful but nuanced portrait of Shakespeare’s final years

Kenneth branagh and ben elton might have played fast and loose with the truth, but they have created something bold and contemporary, article bookmarked.

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Director: Kenneth Branagh. Starring: Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Kathryn Wilder, Lydia Wilson. Cert 12A, 101 mins

There is a knowing irony in calling a film as fanciful as this latter life Shakespeare biopic All is True . Written by Ben Elton and directed by its star Kenneth Branagh , the film plays so fast and loose with the playwright’s final years that they needn’t have bothered fitting Branagh with a prosthetic nose – accuracy is clearly not the priority here.

There is a succinct emotional truth, though, to All is True , whose name comes from the alternative title to Shakespeare’s final play, Henry VIII . It was during a performance of that play that a rogue cannon burnt the Globe Theatre to the ground in 1613 – and it is in the aftermath of that disaster that the film begins. Shakespeare, vowing that he is “done with stories”, returns home to his family in Stratford to live out the rest of his days. But he has been absent for so long that his arrival disrupts their life more than completes it.

He is promptly consigned to the guest room by his wife Anne, played with commanding steeliness by Judi Dench (who, at 84, is 27 years older than her real-life counterpart, but she’s so good you don’t begrudge her for it). Meanwhile, his sharp-tongued daughter Judith (Kathryn Wilder), a 28-year-old “spinster”, resents him for dredging up the death of her twin brother Hamnet. Shakespeare resolves to build a garden in Hamnet’s honour – but he didn’t attend his son’s funeral when he actually died, 17 years ago. “We have to mourn him as if his grave was freshly dug,” says Judith, “because you found the time to mourn.”

• Why Michelle Terry’s Globe is staging post-gender Shakespeare

His other daughter, Susanna (Lydia Wilson), is unhappily married to leading Puritan John Hall, and may or may not be having an affair with a local haberdasher – but it is in writing the enjoyably snarky Judith that Elton really sharpens his quill. Deploying some deliciously anachronistic turns of phrase – John Hall, she declares, is a “hypocritical s***” – he renders Judith acutely aware of her own relegated position in society. A little too aware, perhaps: cutting remarks like “I know what you think is the purpose of a woman’s life” feel decidedly contemporary, while a plot twist that echoes recent films The Wife and Colette strains credulity. But her defiance is satisfying nonetheless. So satisfying, in fact, that an about-turn in personality in the film’s final third feels jarring and poorly explained.

For Branagh’s part, despite that initially offputting prosthetic, as Shakespeare he delivers every nuance. Having directed and starred in countless adaptations of the Bard’s plays, and appeared onstage in them too, he could easily have reeled off each line as a bombastic soliloquy. Instead, his Shakespeare is weary and conflicted, wretchedly egotistic one moment (“Through my genius I’ve brought fame and fortune to this house”), overly meek the next – as in a memorable scene with Ian McKellen ’s Earl of Southampton, which brazenly hints at a romance between the pair.

In the same scene, Shakespeare is told that for all his genius he has lived “the smallest life”. That may be so, but the film paints that life so richly it hardly matters.

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Film Review: ‘All Is True’

Shakespeare enthusiast Kenneth Branagh plays the Bard in his freely fictionalized retirement years, as the character is forced to reconcile the way he underestimated the women in his life.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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Little is known about the events in “All Is True,” an ill-advised Kenneth Branagh indulgence that reimagines the months immediately following William Shakespeare ’s retirement to Stratford-Upon-Avon with a wink — to the extent that even the title is an inside joke for the Bard’s fans, a reference to the name by which his play “Henry VIII” was originally known. Incidentally, it was that very play that destroyed Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, quite literally, when a prop cannon misfired, burning the building beyond repair. And so Branagh’s story begins, in 1613, as the Bard returns home to be with his family, at which point some or none or who-knows-which of the events depicted in “All Is True” did or did not take place.

The movie, written with heavy hand and sodden-witted offense, has a few too many 400-years-the-wiser admonitions it wants to deliver about the way that Shakespeare, for all his gifts at creating rich and well-rounded characters for the stage, may have been a one-dimensional old misogynist in reality. “I don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story,” he is made to say, which is a line more often attributed to American author Mark Twain, but the movie’s agenda is clear: Fifteen years after appearing in Branagh’s adaptation of “Much Ado About Nothing,” actor-cum-screenwriter Ben Elton has taken the liberty of manipulating this penultimate chapter of Shakespeare’s life (his death is relegated to closing text) to suit whatever points he wants to make.

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. In short, “All Is True” takes the English language’s most gifted dramatist and reduces his sunset years to a sloppy soap opera. After so many memorable Shakespearean performances, ranging from “Hamlet” to “Henry V,” Branagh plays the Bard as the dullest of fellows, barely recognizable beneath a false beard, distracting rubber nose, and bizarre prosthetic hairpiece — the combination of which has the effect of interfering with any facial expression that involves more than the lower half of his forehead.

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Perhaps Branagh saw this elaborate disguise as an extension of the transformation he underwent to become Hercule Poirot in last year’s “Murder on the Orient Express,” although in both cases, we are reminded that he is hardly Johnny Depp’s or Lon Chaney’s equal when it comes to creating memorable characters. And if this screenplay really did need to be made, why not cast actors who better fit the part? Why, for example, cast Judi Dench as Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway? In real life, she was eight years his senior, whereas 26 (and one day) separate Dench and Branagh.

The footage itself is pretty enough to look at, and it’s something of a novelty to watch gifted Shakespearean actors — including Ian McKellen, who appears as Shakespeare’s patron (and possible lover), the Earl of Southampton — scrounging for dirt in the playwright’s private life, but what’s the point, when the screenplay is so far beneath the standard of the Bard himself? For nearly the first hour, whenever characters open their mouths, it is to deliver clumsy, expository dialogue. They are constantly reminding one another of who they are, how they are related, when they met, and so on, for the benefit of what Elton must assume are brain-dead audiences. Or else they are commenting on the chasm between Shakespeare’s artistic gift and his sheer inability to manage a dramatic situation he didn’t write himself.

It’s hard not to roll one’s eyes when he confesses, “I’ve lived so long in imaginary worlds, I think I’ve lost sight of what is real, what is true,” although there is some glimmer of human feeling behind this sentiment — perhaps more personal (to the filmmakers?) than biographical. Set several decades after the equally fictionalized events of “Shakespeare in Love,” this relatively charmless non-sequel might just as easily have been dubbed “Shakespeare in Mourning,” as it finds poor William moping about his pension, marinating in the loss of his only son, Hamnet — whose death several years earlier is treated as a family mystery. Shakespeare’s wife and two daughters, Judith (Kathryn Wilder) and Susanna (Lydia Wilson), dealt with Hamnet’s passing when it happened, whereas — as Anne reminds her husband, though he can’t have forgotten — he turned around and wrote “The Merry Wives of Windsor” at the time.

Elton has devised a conceit whereby Shakespeare believes that his son was a budding talent who might follow in his footsteps, based on letters lost to time which were, of course, never actually written. This invention allows the film to incorporate 21st-century gender politics, suggesting that Shakespeare unfairly pressured his daughters to bear him a grandson so that the family name might continue while overlooking that either of them might also have been capable of carrying on his poetic legacy. There are other digs (these better substantiated by his oeuvre) about how humiliated Anne must have been when her husband published sonnets addressed to his “Dark Lady.”

It all feels incongruous for its time, far too conveniently reimagined for 2018, in which artists of the past are being torn down by contemporary moral standards — the way that Hannah Gadsby’s “Nanette” built to a fiery reappraisal of Picasso’s character earlier this year. This is not to say that Shakespeare was a saint, nor to suggest that it’s inappropriate to hold nasty men in history accountable for their transgressions, but so much of “All Is True” is based on idle speculation, Elton and Branagh would have had to tell a much better story for us to buy this malarkey.

Reviewed at QC Screening Room, Los Angeles, Dec. 1, 2018. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 101 MIN.

• Production: A Sony Pictures Classics release and presentation of a TKBC production. Producers: Kenneth Branagh, Ted Gagliano, Tamar Thomas. Executive producers: Laura Berwick, Becca Kovacik, Judy Hofflund, Matthew Jenkins.
• Crew: Director: Kenneth Branagh. Screenplay: Ben Elton. Camera (color, widescreen): Zac Nicholson. Editor: Úna Ní Dhnghaíle. Music: Patrick Doyle.
• With: Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench, Lydia Wilson , Hadley Fraser, Jack Colgrave Hirst, John Dagleish, Sean Foley, Ian McKellen, Gerard Horan, Sam Ellis.

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Fact-Checking 13 Plot Points in All Is True, Kenneth Branagh’s Shakespeare Biopic

By emily rome | may 24, 2019.

After being the face of Shakespeare film adaptations to a whole generation in films like Henry V (1989), Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Othello (1995), Hamlet (1996), and  Love's Labour's Lost (2000), Kenneth Branagh has stepped into the shoes of the Bard himself. The British actor plays William Shakespeare in the new movie All Is True , which the five-time Oscar nominee also directed.

The film, which began rolling out in U.S. theaters on May 10, functions as a sequel of sorts to Shakespeare in Love . Call this one Shakespeare in Retirement . It depicts the Bard in the final few years of his life, which historians believe he mostly spent in Stratford-upon-Avon. Before his death in 1616, Shakespeare reunited with the wife and children he’d spent so much time away from while working in London.

All Is True takes its name from an alternate title used during Shakespeare’s lifetime for his play Henry VIII . The film frequently winks at its title, exploring the role of truth—or lack thereof—in the life of Branagh’s Will.

Spotty historical records leave many details about Shakespeare’s life in the realm of uncertainty, so filmmakers depicting the playwright must make use of broad artistic license to fill in the blanks. Mental Floss spoke with Harvard University professor and Will in the World : How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare author Stephen Greenblatt to fact-check All Is True . It turns out that the film’s depiction of Shakespeare is a mix of truth, presumed truth, and pure imagination.

1. Partially true: Shakespeare retired to Stratford-upon-Avon after the Globe burned down.

All Is True opens with the striking image of Will’s silhouette in front of a massive, crackling fire that destroys his prized playhouse. A title card tells viewers that at a performance of Shakespeare’s Life of Henry VIII (a.k.a. All Is True ) at the Globe on June 29, 1613, during Act 1 Scene 4, a prop cannon misfired, starting the blaze. The next title card states, “The Globe Theatre burnt entirely to the ground. William Shakespeare never wrote another play.”

A prop cannon likely did misfire, and the resulting fire did destroy the Globe; while there were fortunately no deaths or serious injuries as a result, the fire delivered a serious financial blow to Shakespeare and other shareholders in the King's Men, the company of actors who performed at the Globe. But "never wrote another play" is a stretch. “The movie suggests he rode out of London, as it were, in the wake of the fire,” Greenblatt says. “But actually, it’s widely thought that he retired to Stratford before but he continued to write for the theater.”

The Tempest , for example, was likely the last play Shakespeare wrote solo, without a collaborator, and some scholars theorize he wrote it at home in Stratford-upon-Avon, not in London. Academics are divided as to which play was the final play Shakespeare ever wrote, but the general consensus is that it was either Henry VIII or The Two Noble Kinsmen , both collaborations with John Fletcher, which were possibly written during return trips to London.

2. True: Shakespeare’s daughter was accused of adultery.

The film depicts a man named John Lane accusing Shakespeare’s eldest child, Susanna Hall, of adultery. That really happened, and the real-life Susanna Hall sued Lane in 1613 for slanderously saying that she had cheated on her husband with local man Ralph Smith.

As for whether Susanna Hall really did have an extramarital relationship with these men, that’s not known for sure, and the film leaves this somewhat up to viewer interpretation. But her real-life slander case did succeed in getting Lane excommunicated.

3. Likely true: Shakespeare had no schooling beyond age 14.

When a fanboy approaches Will with some eager questions, he says, “They say you left school at 14.” The line may be a bit misleading: Shakespeare did not quit school as a student would today if he "left school" at age 14. But it is true that boys in Shakespeare’s time completed grammar school at around age 14. They then could begin apprenticeships. Shakespeare’s schooling would have been intense, though: He would have been in lessons from 6 a.m. to as late at 6 p.m. six days a week, 12 months a year (getting an extra hour to sleep in only during the winter, when school started at 7 a.m. in the dark and cold months).

As Greenblatt wrote in Will in the World , “the instruction was not gentle: rote memorization, relentless drills, endless repetition, daily analysis of texts, elaborate exercises in imitation and rhetorical variation, all backed up by the threat of violence.”

No surviving records confirm that Shakespeare attended the school in Stratford-upon-Avon, but most scholars safely assume that he did. The grammar school there was free and accessible to all boys in the area, the exception being the children of the very poor, since they had to begin working at a young age.

Regarding the fanboy moment in the film, Greenblatt says, “The implication of that moment was precisely to remind us that [Shakespeare] didn’t go to university, as far as we know. I’m sure he didn’t. He would have bragged about it at some point" (as many of his contemporaries did).

4. Likely true: Susanna Hall was literate, while Shakespeare’s wife and younger daughter were not.

While boys received a formal education in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, girls did not. The film depicts Susanna as skillful at reading, unlike Will’s younger daughter, Judith, or his wife, Anne.

This is likely true: Greenblatt says that “the general sense is that Susanna was literate and that Judith and Anne were not,” though this is another area of Shakespeare’s family history that scholars cannot know for certain.

“This is a trickier matter than it looks,” Greenblatt says, “because lots of people in this period, including Shakespeare’s father, clearly knew how to read, but didn’t know how to write. This would be particularly the case for many women but not exclusively women in the period—that writing is a different skill from reading and that quite a few people were able to read.”

5. True: Shortly after his son’s death, Shakespeare wrote The Merry Wives of Windsor .

When Will insists that he did mourn Hamnet, his only son, who died in 1596 at age 11, Anne bites back, “You mourn him now. At the time you wrote Merry Wives of Windsor .”

It’s a gut-punch from Anne not just because Merry Wives (featuring the ever-entertaining character Falstaff) is a raucous comedy but also because it was, in the most cynical view, a cash grab. Shakespeare likely wrote Merry Wives after the Falstaff-featuring Henry IV Part 1 but before moving onto the grimmer Henry IV Part 2 , “to tap an unexpected new market phenomenon,” scholars Martin Wiggins and Catherine Richardson wrote in British Drama, 1533-1642: A Catalogue regarding the "humours comedy," which debuted to immediate popularity in May 1597.

There is another way to interpret this: Both parts of Henry IV deal with a troubled father-son relationship, and the conclusion of Part 2 depicts a son taking up the mantle of his deceased father. Perhaps Prince Hal and King Henry hit too close to home for Will (who in this film hopes his son will follow in his poetic footsteps), and a lighthearted comedy is what he needed.

6. Very unlikely: The Earl of Southampton visited Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, was one of Shakespeare’s patrons, and Shakespeare included a lengthy dedication to Southampton in his poem  The Rape of Lucrece . Despite that affiliation, the idea that Southampton (played by Ian McKellen, yet another acclaimed Shakespearean actor) would have visited Shakespeare’s home in Stratford is just “a piece of imagination,” according to Greenblatt. He points out that “it’s difficult to imagine any longer the social abyss” between an earl and someone like Shakespeare but explains, “The difference in social class is so extreme that the idea that the Earl would trot by on his horse to visit Shakespeare at his house is wildly unlikely.”

It is more likely that fellow playwright Ben Jonson would have visited Shakespeare, as he does later in the film.

7. Uncertain: Shakespeare’s sonnets were published “illegally and without [his] consent”

This is what Will reminds the Earl of Southampton of in the film. Regarding that term illegally , it’s worth first noting that though copyright law as we know it did not exist in 16th century England, “there definitely were legal controls over publication,” Greenblatt says.

“This is a notoriously complicated matter—the publication of the sonnets,” he explains. “It is still very much open to question. It’s not a settled matter as to whether Shakespeare did or did not have anything to do with the publication of those sonnets.”

8. Uncertain: Shakespeare wrote some of his sonnets for and about the Earl of Southampton.

One juicy debate about Shakespeare that endures is the question of who (if anyone) is the subject of his sonnets. Some speculate that his poems that describe a fair youth refer to the Earl of Southampton.

The film imagines a slightly more complicated—and perhaps more believable—situation than the idea that Southampton and Shakespeare had a fling: Will harbors feelings for Southampton, unrequited by the Earl, who reminds Will, “As a man, it is not your place to love me.”

“There is no way of achieving any certainty,” Greenblatt wrote in Will in the World regarding whether the sonnets were written as love tokens for anyone in particular. “After generations of feverish research, no one has been able to offer more than guesses, careful or wild.”

9. True: 3000 attendees could fit into the Globe for one performance.

In an elaborate, impressive clapback directed at Thomas Lucy, a local politician who repeatedly insults Will, the celebrated playwright cites his many responsibilities in London, then says he somehow “found time to write down the pretty thoughts you mentioned.”

It’s true that Shakespeare was both a businessman and poet. His status as a shareholder in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (later the King’s Men) was actually unprecedented: “No other English literary playwright had ever held such a position,” Oxford professor Bart van Es wrote in Shakespeare in Company , adding that becoming part owner of the Globe, “the most impressive venue in London … placed him in a category entirely of his own.”

Among the accomplishments Will lists for Lucy is filling the Globe with “3000 paying customers per afternoon.”

“That is the upper end of the size of those public theaters, as far as we now know from archaeological evidence,” Greenblatt says. “Three thousand is at the high end, but yes. Whether they actually got 3000 people every afternoon is another question.”

Meanwhile, the reconstruction of the Globe that opened in London in 1997 has a capacity of about half that. Its dimensions are the same as the Globe of Shakespeare’s day but modern fire codes don’t allow playgoers to be packed in quite so tightly.

10. True: Shakespeare wrote Thomas Quiney out of his will.

The film depicts the retired playwright adding his son-in-law-to-be, Thomas Quiney, to his will in anticipation of Quiney's marriage to Will's youngest daughter, Judith. A couple of months later, Shakespeare amends his will again after it’s revealed that Quiney fathered a child by another woman before marrying Judith.

This may have really happened. Shakespeare summoned his lawyer in January 1616 to write Quiney into the will. Then in March, a month after his wedding, Quiney confessed in the vicar’s court to being responsible for the pregnancy of unmarried Stratford woman Margaret Wheeler, who had just died in childbirth (along with the child). Shakespeare then met again with his lawyer to strike out Quiney’s name and insert Judith’s name instead. However, some historians dispute that Shakespeare made this change as a result of the scandal; they instead suggest that it was due to practical concerns about Judith’s financial future.

All Is True reverses scholars’s common assumption that Shakespeare had a better relationship with Susanna’s husband, physician John Hall, than with Judith’s. It depicts Will’s removal of Quiney from his will as a reluctant necessity. “What the movie does is suggest [that John] Hall is an obnoxious, Puritan prig and that Thomas Quiney is actually a very nice fellow,” Greenblatt says.

One aspect of Shakespeare’s relationship with Hall that the film leaves out entirely is scholars’ assumption that Hall would have tended to the playwright during any sickness that led to his death. The cause of Shakespeare’s death is unknown, however, and Hall’s surviving casebooks date back only to 1617, the year after Shakespeare’s death.

11. Unlikely: Shakespeare’s family recited his verse at his funeral.

At what appears to be Will’s funeral, Anne, Judith, and Susanna (all with varying levels of literacy) read aloud the words of a dirge sung for the supposedly dead Imogen in Cymbeline . “Fear no more the heat o’ th’ sun,” they quote, “Thou thy worldly task hast done … All lovers young, all lovers must / Consign to thee and come to dust.”

The words are evocative of Scripture. (“Be not afraid” / “Have no fear” is said to be the most repeated phrase in both the Old Testament and the New Testament—and of course there’s the Genesis passage often read at funerals: “For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”) Greenblatt says it is “very unlikely” that verse not from the Bible would have been recited at a funeral at the time of Shakespeare’s death, adding, “but I found that moment quite touching.”

SPOILER WARNING: The remainder of this article includes spoilers about some major twists in All Is True.

12. Uncertain: Shakespeare’s offspring wrote poetry.

In All Is True , when Will voices grief for his son who had died 17 years prior, he often references Hamnet’s apparent talent as a poet. “He showed such promise, Anne,” Will cries.

Branagh’s film imagines that Hamnet wrote poems full of wit and mischief. Then Judith drops the revelation that she actually crafted the poems, dictating them to her twin brother, who knew how to write. All Is True thus displaces the controversial authorship question from Shakespeare to his children.

“There’s no historical trace of any of this,” Greenblatt says. “That is just an invention.”

13. Uncertain: Hamnet Shakespeare died of the plague.

The other revelation that stuns Will in All Is True is about Hamnet’s death. Will looks at the record noting young Hamnet’s death and becomes suspicious about whether his only son really died of the plague. He confronts Anne and Judith, pointing out the small number of deaths in Stratford in the summer of 1596, saying that the plague strikes with “a scythe, not a dagger.” At this point, Judith confesses that her twin took his own life after she threatened to tell their father about the true author of the poems. She then tearfully recalls Hamnet, who did not know how to swim, stepping into a pond and drowning.

Though the historical record doesn't supply a cause of death for Hamnet, many historians assume he died of the bubonic plague. For the film's revelation about Hamnet’s suicide, which Greenblatt deems as another imaginative invention, Branagh and screenwriter Ben Elton seem to have taken inspiration from the real parish register recording burials at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford, which lists no more than two dozen burials between June and September 1596. Meanwhile, a plague epidemic hit Shakespeare’s hometown shortly after the poet’s birth in 1564 and lasted about six months, killing more than 200 people in Stratford, which was about a sixth of the population.

As Greenblatt points out, the storyline about Judith’s poems and Hamnet’s death serves as a commentary on Virginia Woolf’s compelling essay, “Shakespeare’s Sister,” which appears in A Room of One’s Own , published in 1929. The essay imagines a tragic story for Shakespeare’s fictional sister who is as gifted as her successful brother but is not permitted to go to school and whose parents scold her each time she picks up a book. “She was as adventurous, as imaginative, as agog to see the world as he was,” Woolf wrote.

Greenblatt observes that the central theme of All Is True seems to be “the tragic cost of not having full access to literacy if you were a woman.” He notes, though, that in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, “there were actually quite a few [literate] women, and the work of the last generation, particularly feminist scholars, have recovered a much larger field than Virginia Woolf could have understood or than the movie suggests, of women who were reading and writing in the period.”

Kenneth Branagh’s All Is True is in theaters now.

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All Is True Is a Shakespeare Biopic for the #MeToo Generation

Kenneth branagh’s new movie is part fact, part fan fiction..

You could fill a First Folio with everything we don’t know about Shakespeare. Vanishingly few primary sources about Shakespeare exist, and by the time England’s poet laureate Nicholas Rowe got around to writing the first biography of him, Shakespeare’s mortal coil had been shuffled off for nearly a century. We have Shakespeare’s plays and poems, but only three pages written in his hand survive. What mostly remains from his life are business-related documents, like his will and his application for a coat of arms. Yet we still yearn to know him, to understand Shakespeare on a personal level, to see what kind of person could have written such brilliant works, again and again, for years. As All Is True , Kenneth Branagh’s new film about the retirement years of Williams Shakespeare demonstrates however, the way we arrange our scraps of evidence into a picture of the Bard ultimately says more about us than it does about him.

All Is True tells the story of the time spanning from the burning down of the Globe Theatre during a performance of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII until his death a few years later. This allows Branagh and screenwriter Ben Elton to imagine Shakespeare using what we know about his family and the town of Stratford-upon-Avon. We know that his eldest daughter, Susanna, was accused of cheating on her Puritan husband and contracting syphilis, likely as part of a power struggle for control of the local vicarage. We know that younger daughter Judith made a bad marriage to a local playboy named Thomas Quiney, who had knocked up another girl in town prior to their wedding. We know that Shakespeare altered his will to take Quiney out of it, and we know that Shakespeare made a late addition to that will leaving his “second best bed” to his wife, Anne. Was that cruelty? An inside joke? Something else? No one knows.

Out of this thread, All Is True weaves a portrait of a man haunted with grief for his dead son, who regretted nearly all of his life choices, and a man so obsessed with his family’s legacy that he nearly destroyed his actual family. It’s also a portrait of how that family has protected the Great Man from seeing the consequences of his actions for most of his adult life. They have done this because he is Great, but they have also done this because he is a Man, and they are women. Perhaps inspired by A Room of One’s Own , Elton’s screenplay places the gender dynamics of the Shakespeare household front and center. Shakespeare (Branagh with a prosthetic nose and hairline) is fixated on his dead son and only interested in his living daughters to the extent that they can provide him with male heirs. He wants to repair his relationship with Anne (Judi Dench), but at first he seems interested in her only to the extent that she can make his retirement comfortable.

This is a Shakespeare befitting our present moment, one in which we are trying to renegotiate our relationship to powerful men, the work they produce, and their misdeeds. Shakespeare’s wrongs aren’t in the same league as a Harvey Weinstein or a Bill Cosby, of course. The Shakespeare of All Is True is merely a crap husband and father. Yet the film tries not to let him off too easily. He thinks his genius, and the pursuit of it—which, not coincidentally, has made his family quite rich—is enough to excuse anything else he’s done in life. But by the end of the film, he comes to understand the cost of his greatness, and how that cost has been borne on the backs of those he claimed to love.

Personally, I’m drawn to this vision of Shakespeare, focused as it is on him as an actual man. My own sense of the real-life Shakespeare is that his life was likely dull. He wrote two plays a year, managed a thriving company that performed for as many as 3,000 people at a go, and oversaw his real estate concerns in Stratford. It’s hard to imagine him having much time for gallivanting around London, having raucous affairs , or working with the Catholic underground . Several of his peers did lead that kind of life, and they often died young and penniless. As one character puts it in All Is True , Shakespeare’s life seems, by comparison, well, rather small .

If only such smallness had actually shaped the screenplay of All Is True ! Alas, rather than model itself on Shakespeare’s own history plays, which carefully select and structure events with an eye toward plot and theme, All Is True is an overstuffed mess. The film moves episodically through major plot developments, often in very brief scenes in which each character says only exactly what is needed to either advance the plot or hit a highly emotional note. With the exception of a few scenes that are allowed to stretch and breathe, watching All Is True often feels like you’re viewing an extremely long recap of what you’ve missed in the previous week’s episode of a beloved TV show. The whole intrigue with Susanna and her possible fornication and syphilis, a story which could be its own movie, develops, reaches climax, and resolves in around 15 minutes—only to followed by another dramatic situation that arises, climaxes, and resolves within a self-contained scene or two.

On top of all this it lays on the fan service so thick you might think you’re watching a Shakespeare-themed version of Solo: A Star Wars Story . All Is True wants not only to show you the final couple of years of Shakespeare’s life but also to weigh in on whether or not the Earl of Southampton (Ian McKellen) is the subject of the Sonnets (he is) and whether or not he and Will slept together (they didn’t, despite Will’s great desire to). While Bardolators (not to be confused with the Bardigang ) can laugh at in-jokes like Shakespeare shouting, “I wish I had poached your deer,” to Sir Thomas Lucy , cramming this much plot incident, biographical interpretation, and winking references into one movie is more than it, or we, can bear.

What’s supposed to keep us and the film going through all of this is Shakespeare’s mourning of his dead son, Hamnet. The afterlife of Shakespeare’s only son, who died in 1596 at age 11, is an encapsulation of the problem of Shakespeare biography in miniature. Of all of Shakespeare’s relatives, we know the least about poor Hamnet, but the phonetic similarity between Ham net and Ham let has led some Shakespeareans to assume the boy had a central importance in the work and psyche of his father. He may very well have. Or not! After all, the story of Shakespeare’s prince of Denmark was derived from the Scandinavian legend of Amleth . It’s yet another moment of ambiguity in the historical record, just as John Shakespeare—Will’s father who died the year Hamlet was completed—may have been a terrible businessman whose shameful profligacy drove Will to London, or a successful businessman who sent Will to London to pursue his business interests there.

Will spends much of the movie weeping, or raging, or sitting with a thousand-yard stare, contemplating his dead son. Yet All Is True isn’t quite sure what to make of its own choice in this regard. Hamnet’s death gives Shakespeare his arc and chugs us along from revelation to revelation. But it is also absurd to depict a man as so paralyzed by grief 20 years after his son’s demise in a country as death-drenched as England was in the early 17 th century. Is a sexist Will really just grieving the loss of a male heir? Or are we meant to take it seriously? All Is True can’t quite figure this out, resorting instead to having Shakespeare’s wife and daughters constantly point out how peculiar all this is, as if self-awareness on the screenplay’s part can substitute for making a clear choice. Hamnet’s central importance to film is ultimately an act of transference. We want to be able to talk to him, so Will does, too. We want to solve the mystery of who he really was, so Will is given a mystery about him to solve.

Despite all of this, All Is True is too peculiar and too imbued with love to simply set aside. Kenneth Branagh donning a bald-cap and fake nose to play Shakespeare is an idea so ridiculous only Branagh would’ve attempted it. But only Kenneth Branagh could also manage to make any of the resulting film work. With his cheeseball sensibility and palpable egomania, Branagh is an easy director to mock. There’s one slow-motion shot of Shakespeare running to the banks of a river in the early evening, his shoulder-length hair fluttering majestically, that is unintentionally hilarious, for example. Yet the film might still move you to tears, and both impulses come from the same place: Branagh’s exuberant, overwhelming, extraordinary sincerity as a filmmaker, a style he once referred to enthusiastically as swimming in a river of ham .

Branagh’s best films, the ones made during the first decade of his movie career, all feel like labors of love. Whether it’s love of the protagonist ( Henry V ) or film noir and classic Hollywood melodrama ( Dead Again ), or his then-wife Emma Thompson ( Much Ado About Nothing ), there’s an infectious quality to Branagh’s passions. All Is True does not rank alongside those films, but it feels like each frame is lit by how utterly besotted Branagh is with Shakespeare’s words and life.

The result is his most interestingly and beautifully shot film. The opening image of the Globe burning on the banks of the Thames is like a Turner painting, and nearly every scene has some fascinating staging, or odd angle, or sumptuous bit of nature photography. Many of the takes are surprisingly long, lending an air of theatricality to the whole affair, without it ever seeming too stagey. And there are worse things in this hard life of ours than hearing Branagh, Judi Dench, and Ian McKellen recite Shakespeare at each other. All Is True does not work as a film, but as a memorial to a writer whose shadow we are still working in today, and an expression of yearning to know who he really was, it has an odd vitality that cannot be completely dismissed.

All Is True Review

08 Feb 2019

All Is True

Films about Shakespeare’s life have ranged from the delightfully frivolous ( Shakespeare In Love ) to the historically outrageous ( Anonymous ). But longtime Bard-botherer Kenneth Branagh has taken a more personal, meditative approach, building a closely observed family drama on the little that we know about history’s greatest playwright.

In 1613, a misfiring cannon during a performance of his (worst) play, Henry VIII or ‘All Is True’, burns down the Globe Theatre, and William Shakespeare (Branagh, in disappointing prosthetics) is bereft. He heads home to Stratford, where his wife Anne ( Dench ) and unmarried daughter Judith (Wilder) live in the splendid home that his plays have funded, near his daughter Susanna (Lydia Wilson) and her puritanical doctor husband, John Hall (Hadley Fraser).

A contemplative drama, with more talking than conflict.

William is a distant figure to these people, an absentee father who has spent 20 years managing his theatre at the expense of his family. His attempts to resume his place as head of the household feel ill-fitting; like the coat of arms he bought to secure his status as a gentleman, they are awkward trappings he feels he should have rather than something natural.

Shakespeare’s true obsession, however, is the missing family member, Hamnet, who died at the age of only 11. His father is belatedly grieving, planning a sort of memorial garden and re-opening old wounds as he discusses Hamnet with his wife and daughters. Some of this exploration of grief seems a little forced: would Hamnet’s death be hitting so hard, 17 years after the fact? Has he truly never faced the loss before? Other subplots involving a scandalous allegation against Susanna and the question of Judith’s unmarried status give the film incident but seem curiously detached from the man himself, distractions rather than essential texture.

The biggest challenge, then, comes from an outsider, Ian McKellen ’s Henry Wriothesley, Earl Of Southampton, the dedicatee of two of Shakespeare’s epic poems. In one standout scene Henry challenges Will on the smallness of his life, his lack of personal experience or drama. There’s a sense that Shakespeare is slightly baffled by the question, as if he experienced so much within his head that there was no time for more. Still, this dissection of his failings — by a man of greater social standing who, the film implies, was at least an unrequited love of Shakespeare’s — is quietly devastating, and there are further revelations to come from his wife and daughters that will also challenge his comforting assumptions.

But, as written by Ben Elton, who tackled Stratford’s finest on TV with Upstart Crowe , this is a contemplative drama, with more talking than conflict and regret rather than reproach; in that sense it recalls Jim Jarmusch ’s Paterson and its emphasis on non-incident. This portrait of Shakespeare ultimately agrees with Wriothesley that what happened inside his head was far more interesting than the life he lived outside it, and while it may seem slow and overly silent, perhaps it’s worth making the point that genius sometimes writes what it knows without having to live that truth first.

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All Is True

Time Out says

Director-star Kenneth Branagh finally plays Shakespeare himself in an autumnal drama that’s long on poetry but short on sophistication.

A modern, mainstream take on Shakespeare, ‘All Is True’ offers a dream team of collaborators. Kenneth Branagh, who has done so much to popularise the Bard on the big screen and played many of his characters now tackles the poet and playwright himself – though he is quite hard to recognise under a heavy application of prosthetics which, rather distractingly, make him look a bit like Peter Sellers. He’s also directing, from a script written by Ben Elton who reworks a lot of his material from Shakey sitcom ‘Upstart Crow’ for the purposes of gentle family drama. Then there is RSC veteran Judi Dench, a welcome presence as Will’s straight-talking wife Anne, who gets most of Elton’s better lines.

The aim is to dig into the man himself, and what he may have gone through during his historically obscure retirement years: regret at neglecting his wife and daughters for so long; continuing grief at the loss of his son, Hamnet; concern with maintaining his social standing as he craves a grandson to continue his name. Branagh, Dench and the cast prove engaging and sparky, while the emphasis on natural lighting, with only candlelight to illuminate the night-time interior scenes, weaves an effective atmosphere.

But where ‘All Is True’ falls is in its clunky, repetitive script. Elton does not have a light touch, and you will soon tire of such obvious pronouncements as ‘I’m not a good gardener it’s true; I find it easier to create things with words,’ and characters constantly reminding us just how great Shakespeare is. There are some smart touches, including a cameo by Ian McKellen as the Earl of Southampton, but they’re nestled among too many eye-rolling moments. Surely history’s greatest dramatist deserves better than to have his death preluded by something so trite as a chesty cough?

Release Details

• Release date: Friday 8 February 2019
• Duration: 101 mins

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clock This article was published more than  4 years ago

William Shakespeare, ordinary human, is the flawed hero of ‘All Is True’

Kenneth Branagh plays William Shakespeare contemplating the end of his career in “All Is True,” an intriguing speculative drama about the playwright’s final years. Directed by Branagh from a sprightly script by Ben Elton, this flight of fancy never succumbs to what-if-ism for its own provocative sake. Using the known facts as their guardrails, the filmmakers concoct a credible, if not verifiable, narrative that invites as much healthy skepticism as credulity.

In 1613, Shakespeare is returning to Stratford to rejoin the family he left behind while he pursued fame and, more pointedly, fortune: He finds his wife, Anne (Judi Dench), and daughters Susannah and Judith (Lydia Wilson, Kathryn Wilder) contentedly pursuing life and domestic affairs without him, having long since acclimated themselves to his absence. What’s more, they have little interest in revisiting the death of the Shakespeares’ young son Hamnet, whose loss William is only now beginning to process. “It’s not Hamlet you mourn,” Anne scolds, using the boy’s nickname. “It’s yourself.” Rather than grieve with the rest of the family when the boy died, she tartly reminds her husband, “You wrote ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor.’ ”

Handsomely produced, every frame carefully composed with appropriately autumnal tones, “All Is True” doesn’t traffic in the antic, anachronistic wit of “Upstart Crow,” Elton’s delightful Shakespeare-centric Brit-com. The humor here is quieter, interwoven with more contemplative, even elegiac concerns, as William is forced to confront assumptions — about fatherhood, marriage, his own insecurities and ego — that he has spent a lifetime trying to outrun and out-write. The verities he thought would comfort him in his dotage turn out to be illusions of his own self-serving concoction. As the women in his life become more emboldened to stand in their truth — rather than aid and abet the Shakespeare family mythology — William realizes that he must reckon with his ghosts, including the shame and status-obsession passed down from his own disgraced father.

It sounds heavy, but Elton and Branagh don’t stint on opportunities for a few laughs, especially at the expense of William’s snobby neighbors and priggishly Puritan son-in-law. (The Bard gets to deliver a particularly satisfying riposte to a venomous neighbor named Thomas Lucy). “All Is True” is a rueful movie but finally a joyous one, as sundry loose ends are put right with a Shakespearean combination of tidiness and wishful thinking.

Although the age difference between Branagh and Dench is far greater than the eight years that separated William and Anne, that discrepancy is successfully erased by Branagh’s makeup, and a chemistry between the two actors that swiftly transcends literalistic details like chronology. Wilson and Wilder are just as convincing as siblings who for years have been competing for their father’s respect and affection, with the idealized image of their dead brother. But the crowning scene of “All Is True” comes midway through the film, when William’s patron and muse, Henry Wriothesley (Ian McKellan), stops by for a visit and a fireside chat. Lit entirely by flames and candlelight, the moment is a small masterpiece of writing, direction and acting, the film’s myriad themes dancing to life like so many sparks flickering brilliantly between the two men.

Those themes have to do with the death of a golden child, unresolved guilt and grief, parental self-deception and filial ambivalence — meaning that, in myriad guises and genres, we’ve seen this movie before. With just the right amount of caprice and reverence, Branagh and Elton leave viewers with the impression, not that we’ve glimpsed the Great Man among his minions, but that even the foremost genius of the English language and his family were ordinary people.

PG-13. At area theaters. Contains mature thematic elements, suggestive material and strong language. 101 minutes.

• Entertainment

‘All Is True’ review: Family trouble is the thing in Kenneth Branagh’s Shakespeare tale

Movie review.

William Shakespeare has come home to Stratford-upon-Avon in “All Is True,” there to find a sea of troubles.

His eldest daughter, Susanna (Lydia Wilson), is trapped in a loveless marriage to a spiteful churl (Hadley Fraser) who loathes the theater, of all things, thanks to his strict Puritan beliefs and who impatiently waits for his father-in-law, the most lauded playwright of his age, to kick the bucket so he can inherit his rich estate.

Unmarried younger daughter Judith (Kathryn Wilder) is a roiling ocean of resentment thanks to the fact her father is still extravagantly mourning the death of her 11-year-old twin brother, Hamnet, ”my brilliant, brilliant boy” 10 years before. Dad always liked him best because he saw in the lad a nascent writing talent to match his own.

Finally, long-neglected wife Anne (Judi Dench) is steamed over those famous love sonnets that effuse over the mysterious Dark Lady and the Fair Youth. She knows neither refers to her, and she has her suspicions that the Earl of Southampton (Ian McKellen), one of her husband’s most vocal admirers, is the object of his affections.

Woes aplenty, for sure.

Shakespeare, who has mostly been away in London for 20 years writing his way into the history books, is unprepared for the slings and arrows of family misfortune that come his way when he leaves the footlights behind after his beloved Globe Theatre burns to a crisp in 1613 during the first performance of his latest (and last) play “All is True” (aka “Life of Henry VIII”).

As the Bard, Kenneth Branagh, who also directs, is virtually unrecognizable with a high forehead-revealing hairline and spadelike beard. He looks like Shakespeare of the picture books. And, of course, his credentials to play the great man are well-established as he’s directed and/or starred in a string of Shakespeare-based pictures since “Henry V” in 1989. But here, working from original material (Ben Elton wrote the screenplay, which freely speculates on the particulars of Shakespeare’s final years), he gives us a glum soap opera filled with sullen faces worn by people mired in miseries.

His Shakespeare is defensive about his fame, taking to task a mocking Stratfordite who denigrates his accomplishments by replying that he’s created a thriving theatrical industry in London. He’s baffled and buffeted by his family’s various travails and guilt-ridden in the extreme over having been absent for his cherished son’s death and funeral.

The despair is overflowing, with Wilder carrying the most water in that regard as the embittered Judith scorches her father for having emotionally neglected her throughout her life. That bitterness is further fueled by a long-held secret that goes to the heart of her father’s worshipful relationship to his dead son.

The movie does have some quietly powerful scenes, particularly one between Shakespeare and McKellen’s earl in which the playwright edges up to declaring his love for the other man only to be gently but firmly rebuffed.

“All Is True” is handsomely mounted, filled with shadowed interiors underscoring the darkness of its story, the darkness artfully interrupted by candlelight and firelight.

The movie’s impressive appearance notwithstanding, Shakespeare’s domestic problems do not a classic make.

★★½ “All Is True,”  with Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench, Kathryn Wilder, Lydia Wilson, Hadley Fraser, Ian McKellen. Directed by Branagh, from a screenplay by Ben Elton. 101 minutes. Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, suggestive material and language. Opens June 21 at multiple theaters.

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Geek Culture | Movies, TV, Comic Books & Video Games

Movie Review – All is True (2018)

January 30, 2019 by Tom Beasley

All is True , 2018.

Directed by Kenneth Branagh. Starring Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench, Kathryn Wilder, Lydia Wilson, Alex Macqueen, Jack Colgrave Hirst and Ian McKellen.

When the Globe Theatre burns down during a performance, William Shakespeare vows to stop writing and returns home to Stratford-upon-Avon in order to spend time with his wife and children.

Ben Elton loves Sheakespeare. His recent and very underrated BBC sitcom Upstart Crow casts David Mitchell as the Bard and deals in wry anachronism, such as frequently referring to Shakespeare’s coach rides in terms more akin to motorway and rail travel. He’s on more earnest and traditional form as the screenwriter behind All is True , which recounts the final few years of the playwright’s life, after the burning down of the Globe brings him back to Stratford-upon-Avon and his family.

On both sides of the camera is Kenneth Branagh – a veteran of Shakespeare’s work on both stage and screen. He directed the film almost in secret, with almost no pre-publicity, in between his blockbuster work. It’s surprising he got away with it really given the size of the preposterous prosthetic schnozzle he’s sporting, which was presumably visible from space for the majority of the production. Perhaps emboldened by the success of Poirot’s moustache in Murder on the Orient Express , it seems he’s set to allow a different facial feature to upstage him in each of his movies.

When we meet him, Branagh’s Shakespeare has abandoned his writing career in the wake of the Globe disaster and returned home to set up a garden. He claims to have “lived so long in imaginary worlds I’ve lost sight of what’s true” and is keen to right the wrongs of his lengthy absence from the family home, especially after the passing of his 11-year-old son Hamnet more than 15 years previously. Unfortunately, for his wife Anne (Judi Dench) and his daughters, it’s too little too late, with Dench murmuring dismissively that he is like “a guest” to them at this point.

This is a joyously overwrought and theatrical movie, which finds its best moments when it deals in ripe, gently bawdy dialogue. It’s no coincidence that the film’s standout scene is the extended cameo for Ian McKellen as the flamboyant Earl of Southampton – believed to have been the inspiration for the Fair Youth referred to in many of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Given how often those outside of Shakespeare’s immediate family talk about how amazing he is, it’s a delight to see McKellen take him down a couple of pegs.

And that’s when All is True works best. As a serious biography of Shakespeare’s final years, it falls a little flat and seems to lean towards scandal rather than emotional depth. However, the sense of tabloid sensationalism does allow for some exquisite silliness, that Branagh sells with all of the unbridled joy you’d expect from someone who by now has paid homage to the playwright at every major point along the silly-to-serious spectrum. He gets to deliver some withering Tudor putdowns as well, including a sweary dressing down of The Inbetweeners star Alex Macqueen’s pompous MP.

Branagh’s direction does provide dramatic highlights, with one scene elegantly staged so that Dench is in the foreground of the frame but pushed to one side – present, but ignored – while Branagh’s Shakespeare bellows with rage in the centre of the frame, but far from the camera – dominant, but distant. It’s a neat signal to the audience that this family dynamic has been warped to breaking point by a man whose reaction to grief was not to rush home to be with those closest to him, but to write some of his most celebrated comedies.

Despite the all-encompassing presence of Branagh’s Bard and his humongous hooter, it’s actually Kathryn Wilder as Judith Shakespeare who emerges from the film with a handful of stolen scenes under her arm. She’s terrific as a woman who’s unsure of her place in the world, but certain that her current situation is not what should await her. That indecision is palpable in Wilder’s performance, starting from a similar state of meek resignation to Dench’s subdued Anne, but growing into a resentment of her father that feeds into some of the unexpected third act revelations. It’s a great performance from Wilder, who has appeared in several of Branagh’s stage productions of Shakespeare, as well as in a small role in Murder on the Orient Express .

Arguably, All is True might have been more interesting had it focused on Judith and her sister, rather than spending so much time raking over the well-trodden ground of Shakespeare’s life. As gently entertaining as the movie is, there’s a definite sense of ‘been there, done that’ to its storytelling and characterisation. But for a few intriguing departures from accepted historical record, this is pretty much Stratford’s most famous son exactly as you’ve seen him before – albeit with a bigger nose.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★

Tom Beasley is a freelance film journalist and wrestling fan. Follow him on Twitter via @TomJBeasley for movie opinions, wrestling stuff and puns.

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All Is True (2018)

If there’s one actor more than qualified to tackle any aspect of William Shakespeare’s life, it’s Kenneth Branagh.  Having successfully helmed such adaptations as Henry V , Much Ado About Nothing , Hamlet , Love’s Labour’s Lost , and As You Like It , the lauded actor/director is fitting for the final, and speculative, years of the famed playwright’s existence.  Not much is known about the particular time frame Branagh’s All Is True presents, but through the script work from Ben Elton he’s presented as a disheartened figure following the destruction of the famed Globe Theatre during one of his performances; we are informed it crumbled following a mishap involving a failing cannon.

Having spent the majority of his life in London, Shakespeare returns to a quieter home style in the Greater London borough of Stratford, intending retirement with no desire to write again.  During his absent years his wife, Anne (Judi Dench), and children, specifically daughter Judith (Kathryn Wilder) and Hamnet (Sam Ellis), fended for themselves, and due to his extended deprivation there’s a disconnect between himself and his family, aided by the death of young Hamnet, who he was informed died of plague during the years he was away in London.  He’s not convinced that his young son was taken in this manner though – despite reassurance from Anne – and it’s the latter half of All Is True ‘s slow-burn mentality that ultimately reveals the true nature of his demise; these scenes providing Wilder with some truly awe-inspiring moments to steal focus from her more seasoned peers.

As much as All Is True bases itself around Shakespeare and the push-pull dynamic between himself and his wife and children, one of the film’s greatest sequences involves an extended cameo appearance from Ian McKellan, the legendary actor clearly in his element as the foppishly-attired Earl of Southampton.  Coming to stay with Shakespeare for a brief visit, the script crackles when spoken through the tongues of Branagh and McKellan, the characters hinting at a more intimate relationship than what appears on the surface.

Those expecting something a little more traditional in terms of Shakespeare’s works may possibly walk away from All Is True disappointed as Branagh’s picture only mentions the briefest of his works in passing, instead presenting us with a human drama that consistently flickers before silently exploding with a passionate angst that drives home Shakespeare’s tormented soul.

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Kenneth Branagh Embodies the Bard in Mesmerizing ‘All Is True’

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

Sir Kenneth Branagh has spent a major part of his career interpreting the works of William Shakespeare . His 1989 breakthrough in film featured Branagh as the star and director of Henry V (he won Oscar nominations for both jobs). So it only seems fair that Branagh should be the one to play the Bard in All Is True , directing a mesmerizing meditation on the last days of the greatest writer in the English language.

Such a grandiose statement may lead you to fear that Branagh and screenwriter Ben Elton mean to inflate their film into a bloated, and-then-I-wrote biopic. Nothing of the sort. Little is known for sure about the details of Shakespeare’s life. But as Shakespeare says in the film, “I never let the truth get in the way of a good story.” Neither does Branagh.

The concept here is that the artist whose plays had the largest scope is now leading the smallest life. As All is True begins, in 1613, Shakespeare has returned to his home in Stratford-upon-Avon to retire after years of prodigious productivity. The catalyst is the fire that destroyed the Globe Theater, where Shakespeare’s plays were regularly performed. A spark from a stage cannon during a performance of All Is True , the original title of Henry VIII, reduced the Globe to ashes.

So now Will, as his family calls him, is done with it all. He’s no good at gardening, but gardening is what he’ll do. That and reconcile with the family he neglected for all these years. His wife Anne Hathaway (Dame Judi Dench ), eight years his senior, treats him like a guest in his own house. His daughters harbor festering resentments. Susanna (Lydia Wilson), who is publicly denounced as a whore by Puritan society for cheating on her husband (Hadley Fraser), keeps her distance. And the unmarried Judith (Kathryn Wilder) believes her father holds a grudge against her for surviving her twin brother Hamnet, Shakespeare’s beloved only son, who died at 11, possibly from plague. Scholars have speculated about the connection between Hamnet to Hamlet, but Branagh’s film isn’t having it. Yet the ghost of his beloved boy is everywhere in Will’s thoughts and waking dreams.

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It’s a telling irony that the women in Shakespeare’s time were never taught to read and write. Yet Dench, in a magisterial performance that never misses a trick, makes Anne a woman you trifle with at your peril. The closest All Is True comes to romance is Will’s relationship with his patron, the Earl of Southampton ( Ian McKellen ), believed to be the inspiration for several of Will’s most famous poems and sonnets. A conversation between the two men, wittily and movingly acted by Branagh and McKellan, is a high point in a film that cinematographer Zac Nicholson bathes in the autumnal light of time remembered.

Those expecting All Is True to replicate the romp of 1998’s Oscar-winning Shakespeare in Love are at the wrong movie. And Branagh is even less interested in a fawning tribute. Though screenwriter Ben Elton is best known for the farcical zest of his TV sitcom work on Blackadder and Upstart Crow — a teasing kick at the young Bard —  All Is True looks with gentle humor and stirring gravity at a lion in winter, who died in 1616 at 52, at home but hardly at peace.

Branagh, who directed five other Shakespeare film adaptations — including Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing —  and appeared in countless more on stage and screen, clearly holds All Is True close to his heart. Modeling his appearance on the best known painting of Shakespeare with an elongated nose accented by long hair on the sides and practically none on top, Branagh is the Bard incarnate. But his real achievement lies in capturing the internal life of an aging genius who claims that he’s so lived so long in fictional worlds of his own imagining that he’s “lost sight of what is real.” Branagh’s performance is a triumph of ferocity and feeling that shuns Shakespeare the literary rock star to find the flawed, touchingly human man inside.

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Movie Review: All Is True (2018)

• Howard Schumann
• Movie Reviews
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• --> June 11, 2019

John Madden’s 1998 film “Shakespeare in Love” proposed a secret love affair as being the inspiration behind Shakespeare’s most popular play, “Romeo and Juliet.” The film’s widespread success revealed the public’s longing to find a real human being behind the name of the iconic poet and playwright who composed at least 37 plays, 154 sonnets, and five long narrative poems, but whose life story we know little about. Written by Ben Elton (“Three Summers”), the latest attempt to shed some light on the subject is Kenneth Branagh’s All is True , a film that focuses on the poet’s last years in Stratford-upon-Avon after his premature retirement in 1613. While it is a work of speculative fiction, by borrowing the mysterious alternative title of Shakespeare’s “Henry VIII,” Branagh implies (perhaps tongue-in-cheek) that the film reflects true events.

All Is True opens as Shakespeare (Branagh, “ Murder on the Orient Express ”), vowing to never write again after the Globe Theater burned to the ground in 1613, returns to his Stratford home after an absence of 21 years. From the outset, the feeling tone is one of wistful sadness enhanced by shots by cinematographer Zac Nicholson (“ The Death of Stalin ”) of autumn leaves drifting slowly to the ground. One almost expects to hear Frank Sinatra in the background singing “September Song.” Taking a page from his most famous play “Hamlet,” William is visited on his arrival by the ghost of his son Hamnet (Sam Ellis), who died at the age of 11 and who offers his father some of his poems to read. Saddled with a prosthetic nose and hairline, Branagh resembles a figure being geared for display at Madame Tussauds Wax Museum.

Though historically not in evidence, Shakespeare is shown being welcomed by the townsfolk with a reverence usually reserved for the Archbishop of Canterbury. He is greeted coldly, however, by his wife Anne, played by the great Judi Dench (“ Victoria and Abdul ”) and his daughter Judith (Kathryn Wilder), but with slightly less chill by daughter Susannah (Lydia Wilson, “ Star Trek Beyond ”). Accused by his wife of not mourning Hamnet at the time of his death, William insists that he did mourn Hamnet but Anne retorts, twisting the knife, “You mourn him now. At the time you wrote ‘Merry Wives of Windsor’” (a farcical comedy). Judith’s resentment is said to stem from her belief that her father thinks that “the wrong twin died,” while Susanna cannot help but notice William’s disdain for her marriage to local physician John Hall (Hadley Fraser, “ The Legend of Tarzan ”), a man of strict Puritan leanings.

Tormented by the death of his son whom he believed was a promising poet whose writing showed “wit and mischief,” the film proceeds episodically through William’s lonely planting of a garden in Hamnet’s memory, his strained relationship with his wife Anne, and his conflicts with his two daughters. Shakespeare emphatically tells his younger daughter Judith that she should marry and provide him with a male heir. Though he rages that his talent made the family very wealthy and was not appreciated, he later begins to understand the price they paid for his genius. One of the film’s high points is the exchange during an unlikely visit to Stratford by the prettified 3rd Earl of Southampton, played by the forty-years-too-old Ian McKellen (“ Mr. Holmes ”).

The Earl brings up his identity as the “fair youth” of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, pointing out that “it was only flattery, of course,” to which the Bard responds, “Except, I spoke from deep within my heart.” “But I was so young and pretty, then,” Southampton responds. When they take turns in reciting Shakespeare’s immortal Sonnet 29, asserting the great author’s tender feeling towards the Earl, we at last get a glimpse of Shakespeare’s true greatness. While the film has considerable pleasures including striking performances by Dench and Branagh, basically, All is True exists primarily as a vehicle to promote the traditional view of Shakespeare’s authorship, now coming under attack from various quarters, most prominently from the growing interest in other candidates.

Contrary to its perceived intention, however, the film is neither edifying nor convincing in its attempt to put a human face on a cipher who lacks history, personality, or indeed any semblance of a biography, and whose life story, as it has come down to us, has no connection to the many-faceted genius revealed in the plays and poems. Ignoring the fact that Shakespeare was a tax evader, money lender, profiteer, and grain hoarder, Branagh and Elton envision Shakespeare as a genius capable of any literary feat imaginable. In one scene, an aspiring writer asks the Bard how he accomplished what he did without any schooling past the age of 14, without traveling outside of England, or having ready access to the immense learning evident in the plays.

The answer is right out of the Stratfordian playbook of miracles, “What I know . . . I have imagined,” he says, asking us to accept that Shakespeare’s knowledge of philosophy and astronomy, theology and the law, foreign languages, music, medicine, and court intrigue all came from his vivid imagination. In its attempt to make the implausible plausible, however, Branagh dumbs Shakespeare down enough to persuade us that he is just a “storyteller,” an ordinary fellow after all, with domestic problems just like the rest of us. At one point, William proclaims with un-Shakespeare-like banality, “I’ve lived so long in imaginary worlds, I think I’ve lost sight of what is real.” We might also say that is true of the traditional Shakespeare biography.

Tagged: author , marriage , play , retirement , Shakespeare

I am a retired father of two living with my wife in Vancouver, B.C. who has had a lifelong interest in the arts.

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All is true, common sense media reviewers.

Bard "biopic" takes poetic license; swearing, mature themes.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Film is somewhat about "you can't go home again,"

Shakespeare faced quite a bit of resentment, passi

Discussion about how a child died; mourning of a l

Stratford-upon-Avon is Puritan country in the 1620

Cursing is infrequent but includes "bastard," "bit

Implied ale drinking via unmarked casks and bottle

Parents need to know that All Is True is director Kenneth Branagh's exploration of William Shakespeare's final years, after he's returned to his family and hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon. if you haven't done your homework on the Bard, the film can be hard to follow, with inside jokes that may not connect. It…

Positive Messages

Film is somewhat about "you can't go home again," demonstrating that even William Shakespeare felt small once he was back in the town where he'd grown up as "the son of a thief." "How to be a great writer" message is also present and connects to movie's title.

Positive Role Models

Shakespeare faced quite a bit of resentment, passive-aggressive behavior from his family when he returned home after being mostly absent for 20 years. While his writing is of course admirable, nothing in film indicates that he's much of a role model on a personal level, other than the fact he does turn around to give his family the appreciation they deserve.

Violence & Scariness

Discussion about how a child died; mourning of a lost son. Hostile shouting on several occasions. A man appears in a blood-splattered shirt, speaking about the death of others. Conversation about the fatalities brought on by the plague.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Stratford-upon-Avon is Puritan country in the 1620s. Sexual tensions are felt, affairs are implied, but they're usually spoken about in an indirect way. Plot weighs heavily on conceiving a baby, and there's hope that one girl will marry. It's implied that an unmarried woman slips away to have sex. A married woman is put on trial after someone says she's committing adultery. Two men have a poetic conversation that implies same-sex love.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Cursing is infrequent but includes "bastard," "bitch," "d--k," "dildo," "s--t," and "whore."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Implied ale drinking via unmarked casks and bottles. Talk of wine.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that All Is True is director Kenneth Branagh 's exploration of William Shakespeare's final years, after he's returned to his family and hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon. if you haven't done your homework on the Bard, the film can be hard to follow, with inside jokes that may not connect. It portrays the aged playwright (also Branagh) as a sexist, bisexual patriarch who's belatedly mourning the son who died 17 years prior, which could be upsetting to anyone who has lost a child or a sibling. Scandals ensue as Shakespeare's daughters, who feel they're a disappointment because of their gender, desperately try to give their dad a male heir -- but all the sex stuff is fairly veiled or indirect. Curse words ("s--t," "bitch") are used occasionally to punctuate strong emotion. The film sheds light on Elizabethan England, where Shakespeare's saucy scripts were welcomed in the big city, but in the Puritan stronghold of the rural countryside, a woman's only purpose was childbearing -- and only a harlot would wear a fabric with color. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Based on 1 parent review

all is true

What's the story.

The later years of William Shakespeare's life are explored in ALL IS TRUE, which weaves together the small threads of fact that are available on the Bard into a fully imagined story. In 1613, following the destruction of the Globe theater, Shakespeare ( Kenneth Branagh , who also directs) retires and returns to his home in Stratford-upon-Avon. But after so many years with him away, living and writing in London, his family feels neglected -- especially his wife, Anne ( Judi Dench ). And while he's trying to mend relationships at home, Shakespeare is also wrestling with his fame and legacy.

Is It Any Good?

As Shakespeare fan fiction, All Is True is glorious; as a biopic, it's misleading and irresponsible. Screenwriter Ben Elton is known in the U.K. for his clever satirical series Upstart Crow , in which known facts from Shakespeare's life are incorporated into a comic vision of how the Bard's plays were conceived and created -- it's kind of like taking the Shakespeare in Love playbook and running in a different direction. To those on the other side of the pond, baking facts into a fictional it-could-have-happened dramatic piece makes for a delicious snack for Shakespeare devotees to devour and debate. But as those who grew up with Oliver Stone can attest, if the audience isn't aware that facts are being manipulated into a theory or fantasy, they think they're watching truth. And having modern cinema's leading authority on Shakespeare, Branagh (who transforms into the playwright with a nose that's an outright appendage), at the helm only lends credibility to the information that's being disseminated. Unlike Upstart Crow, this Will has more or less abandoned his family to pursue his fame and fortune, becoming a paycheck dad. And when he finally returns home as a middle-aged man, he's shocked at how much resentment has been boiling over from the women of his house; they feel he's dismissed them because of their gender. It's a fairly ugly view of the British poet, especially since it involves the utter humiliation of his loyal, patient wife.

While the script may not quite be on par with those of the world's greatest wordsmith, he'd still be wowed by the thespian ensemble of Branagh, Dench, and Ian McKellen . And the production design is a beautiful piece of art: The colors, the textures, the stillness, and the beauty are sumptuous; many of the shots look like paintings you might see hanging on a gallery wall. The cinematography is equally artistic, from shots tilted up from ground level to a distant image with one small moving figure crossing the screen. Extreme poetic license aside, the film's creativity and originality are -- to use a word Shakespeare coined -- bedazzling.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

The film takes the few facts that are known about Shakespeare and invents the circumstances, emotions, and character traits that might have accompanied them. What clues are you given in All Is True that what you're watching isn't necessarily a fully accurate biopic? When creating historical screenplays, writers often don't know what exactly was said or felt and have to create it: Where do you think the line is between creative license and misrepresentation?

Families can talk about the historical realities of life in Shakespeare's time. Were you surprised to hear that people were required to go to church or face a fine? How is being a woman today different from being a woman in the 1600s? How is life in general different now?

What do you think it might be like to be the child or spouse of a famous or very successful parent? Do you think it would be hard to develop your own identity?

Shakespeare tells an aspiring playwright that, to be good, he should search the contents of his soul and write what's there -- that in doing so, he will find that "all is true." What does that mean to you, and how can you apply that to your own writing?

Movie Details

• In theaters : May 10, 2019
• On DVD or streaming : August 13, 2019
• Cast : Kenneth Branagh , Ian McKellen , Judi Dench
• Director : Kenneth Branagh
• Inclusion Information : Gay actors, Female actors
• Studio : Sony Pictures Classics
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : History
• Run time : 101 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : thematic elements, suggestive material and language
• Last updated : June 20, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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All Is True Streaming: Watch & Stream Online via Starz

By Fizza khan

Want to know where to watch All Is True online ? We have all the streaming details right here. All Is True is a 2018 British historical drama film directed by and also starring Kenneth Branagh. The movie explores the final years of Shakespeare’s life, focusing on his retirement in Stratford-upon-Avon after the famous Globe Theatre burns down.

Here’s where you can watch All Is True online.

Where can you watch and stream All Is True?

You can watch and stream All Is True on Starz .

The movie delves into themes of mortality, artistic ambition, and the complexities of human nature, offering a poignant and intimate portrayal of the legendary playwright during a critical period in his life.

The movie cast includes Kenneth Branagh as William Shakespeare, Anne Hathaway stars as Judi Dench, Shakespeare’s wife, Ian McKellen as the Earl of Southampton, Kathryn Wilder as Judith Shakespeare, Lydia Wilson as Susanna Shakespeare, and others.

How to watch All Is True and stream online

All Is True online is available to stream online via Starz. Starz is a premium cable and streaming service that offers a wide range of movies and TV shows including Outlander and others.

You can watch via Starz by following these steps:

• Go to Starz.com’s sign-up page .
• The standard rate for the six-month plan is $46, excluding any special offers
• The standard for the monthly plan is $9.99 per month, excluding any special offers

Starz is also available as a Prime Video Channel, meaning that subscribers to the Amazon Prime Video service can also receive discounted access to Starz. The discounts offered vary throughout the year. You can sign up here .

The official synopsis for All Is True reads:

“London, June 29th, 1613. The Globe Theater, ran by the famous playwright William Shakespeare, accidentally burns to ashes. Seriously affected, he stops writing and returns to his hometown, where his wife Anne and daughters Judith and Susanna get surprised to hear he intends to stay there definitively, after two decades working in the capital, neglecting his sincere affections for them. “

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Movie Review: ‘Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare’ amps up a true-tale WWII heist

The Associated Press

April 17, 2024, 5:46 PM

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The latest Guy Ritchie flick “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” has a spine of true story to it, even if it does all it can to amplify a long-declassified World War II tale with enough dead Nazis to make “Inglourious Basterds” blush.

The result is a jauntily entertaining film but also an awkward fusion. Ritchie’s film, which opens in theaters Friday, takes the increasingly prolific director’s fondness for swaggering, exploitation-style ultraviolence and applies it to a real-life stealth mission that would have been thrilling enough if it had been told with a little historical accuracy.

In 2016, documents were declassified that detailed Operation Postmaster, during which a small group of British special operatives sailed to the West African island of Fernando Po, then a Spanish colony, in the Gulf of Guinea. Spain was then neutral in the war, which made the Churchill-approved gambit audacious. In January 1942, they snuck into the port and sailed off with several ships — including the Italian merchant vessel Duchessa d’Aosta — that were potentially being used in Atlantic warfare.

Sounds like a pretty good movie, right? The story even features James Bond author Ian Fleming, giving it more than enough grist for a WWII whopper. “Operation Postmaster” makes for a better title, too, than the ungainly “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.” Ritchie, however, already has an operation — last year’s “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre” — in his filmography.

Ritchie, who turned Sherlock Holmes into a bulked-up action star, has always preferred to beef up his movies. It’s a less-noted side effect of the superhero era that regular ol’ heroes have been supersized, too, as if human-sized endeavors aren’t quite enough anymore. And “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare,” in which a handful of operatives kill approximately a thousand Nazis, has a fine, brawny duo in Henry Cavill and Alan Ritchson.

In the movie’s opening scene, they’re relaxing on a small ship in the Atlantic when Germans rush aboard. After a few laughs and a Nazi monologue that plays like a poor man’s version of Christoph Waltz’s masterful oration in “Inglourious Basterds,” the duo makes quick mincemeat of them, leaving blood splattered across the henley shirt of Anders Lassen (Ritchson, a charming standout).

Not much has changed in Ritchie-land, though he’s swapped tweed for skintight tees and cable-knit sweaters in a rollicking high-seas adventure. As in the director’s previous movies, everyone — and, as before, nearly all male — seems to be having a good time. Likewise, Ritchie revels in his characters’ debonair nonchalance while meting out all manner of savagery.

The assembled group of operatives are said to be delinquents and misfits, though they steadfastly adhere to the polite manners of past Ritchie protagonists. They may kill with bloodthirsty impunity but what really matters is upholding an old-school sense of style. When the undercover agents Marjorie Stewart (Eiza González, who silkily cuts like a knife through the film) and Mr. Heron (Babs Olusanmokun, excellent) ride a Nazi-controlled train on their way to Fernando Po, they look in disgust at the German sausages they’re served. Later, someone will say, “I hate Nazis not because they’re Nazis but because they’re so gauche.”

And in proficiently staged set pieces, Ritchie makes his own case for a bit of class. As a journeyman filmmaker now pumping out a movie a year, he’s in many ways grown to be a more complete director. He’s adept at giving the many members of his large ensemble moments to shine — including Henry Golding, Alex Pettyfer, Cary Elwes, Freddie Fox as Fleming, Til Schweiger as a barbaric Nazi and Rory Kinnear as Churchill.

And once the film — based on the nonfiction book by Damien Lewis — settles into a seedy, sunny West African setting and the nighttime heist finale, “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” proves a spirited, if grossly exaggerated diversion.

“The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare,” a Lionsgate release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for strong violence throughout and some language. Running time: 92 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

Copyright © 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.

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Unsung Hero

Based on a remarkable true story, a mum's faith stands against all odds and inspires her husband and children to hold on to theirs. Based on a remarkable true story, a mum's faith stands against all odds and inspires her husband and children to hold on to theirs. Based on a remarkable true story, a mum's faith stands against all odds and inspires her husband and children to hold on to theirs.

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Reader's Digest

40 Movies Based on True Stories You Won’t Be Able to Stop Thinking About

Posted: December 21, 2023 | Last updated: December 21, 2023

The most compelling movies based on true stories

There's a reason there have been so many incredible movies based on true stories: It's because the truth is more fascinating than fiction a lot of the time. What also helps our appreciation is just knowing that these stories actually happened, so we're able to relate to the characters on a much deeper level. We feel what they feel, and we see the world from their perspective, and that’s not just true for the best dramas .

Movies based on true stories have the potential to run the emotional gamut. They can be hilarious , heart-wrenchingly sad or outright terrifying —or even all three at the same time! But the best ones are thought-provoking and will stick with you for days after you've left the theater or closed your laptop. We've put together a list of films that will please every kind of movie watcher, including biopics, epic romances , war stories and historical dramas. We based our picks on blockbusters, award winners, critical darlings, classics and cinematic game-changers. No matter what you’re in the mood for, you’ll find it on this list.

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Released: 1997

Rated: PG-13

Memorable quote: "A woman's heart is a deep ocean of secrets."

Twenty-five years after its release, our hearts still go on for James Cameron's Academy Award–winning romantic drama. Set against the tragic 1912 sinking of the grand ocean liner, Titanic tells the tale of Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Rose (Kate Winslet), who defied their onboard class restrictions (she was a wealthy first-class passenger, he was a starving artist from steerage) and fell hopelessly in love.

While Jack and Rose were fictional characters, the deaths of 1,500-plus passengers and crew on the Titanic were not. Between Cameron's stunning visuals, including a CGI recreation of the ship's sinking, and one of the best movie soundtracks of all time, audiences will never let go of Titanic.

12 Years a Slave

Released: 2013

Memorable quote: "I don't want to survive. I want to live."

It is nearly impossible for a movie based on a true story to avoid taking any creative license, but 12 Years a Slave comes very close. One of the most harrowing kidnapping movies, Steve McQueen's Oscar-winning film recounts the incredible journey of Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free Black man tricked and sold into slavery in 1841, and his eventual rescue more than a decade later. The film is also one of the best book-to-movie adaptation s because it doesn't shy away from the brutality detailed in Northup's memoir, specifically the horrific whipping of Patsey (Lupita Nyong'o). Although 12 Years a Slave has a "happy ending," with Northup reuniting with his family, the film is still one of the saddest movies based on real-life events.

Released: 2012

Memorable quote: "This is what I do. I get people out. And I've never left anyone behind."

Despite being a gripping spy thriller based on the very real extrication of six American diplomats from Iran in 1980 by CIA operative Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck, who also directed the movie), this film took a lot of creative license. So much so that Arg o is actually one of the most historically inaccurate movies ever made. We don't want to include any spoilers here, but there's a big, climactic sequence on the tarmac at one point in the movie ... and it never happened. But never let the facts get in the way of a good story, right?

Hidden Figures

Released: 2016

Memorable quote: "On any given day, I analyze the velometer levels for air displacement, friction and velocity. And compute over 10,000 calculations by cosine, square root and lately analytic geometry by hand."

Biopics about the Space Race usually focus on the White, male astronauts privileged enough to set foot in a spaceship, but what about the people who got them to the moon and back safely? Hidden Figures tells the story of three brilliant Black female mathematicians working for NASA in the early 1960s: Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe).

Even though they were subjected to racist laws at every turn—like Katherine having to run across the Langley Research Center campus just to use a segregated bathroom, or Mary not being allowed to take night classes at an all-White school to become an engineer—these women persevered. And in the process, they changed the trajectory of the American space program. Hidden Figures should be added to any Black history movies must-watch list.

Released: 2018

Memorable quote: "We are alone. No matter what they tell you, we women are always alone."

One of the most critically acclaimed movies based on true stories on Netflix, Roma is a semi-autobiographical tale of writer-director Alfonso Cuarón's childhood. The film follows Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), the beloved Mixteca live-in maid for a wealthy Mexico City family in the early 1970s. Cleo must delicately walk the murky line between employee and family member—especially when she faces an unplanned pregnancy.

Aside from being one of the best Hispanic movies , Roma is also a gorgeously shot film. Cuarón opts for black-and-white instead of bright, garish '70s colors, and he manages to find the beauty in the mundane, like the opening shots of water cascading over the concrete as Cleo washes the driveway.

Schindler's List

Released: 1993

Memorable quote: "There will be generations because of what you did."

Thirty years after premiering in theaters—and winning seven Academy Awards—Steven Spielberg's masterpiece about the horrors of the Holocaust remains not only one of the best '90s movies but also the best movie based on a true story. Schindler's List recounts the story of Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), a German businessman who saved more than 1,000 European Jews from Nazi slaughter during World War II by employing them in his factories. Although Spielberg does take creative license by having his protagonist appear more directly involved with the rescue missions than he actually was (apparently Schindler didn't help draw up the life-saving list, the way he did alongside Ben Kingsley's Itzhak Stern in the movie), there is no denying the instrumental role Schindler played in his Jewish employees' survival.

Bonnie and Clyde

Released: 1967

Memorable quote: "I'm Miss Bonnie Parker, and this here's Mr. Clyde Barrow. We rob banks."

Bonnie and Clyde is one of those great movies that got rotten reviews when it was released. But this 1967 film's portrayal of Depression-era criminals Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway) and Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) does warrant a deeper examination more than 50 years later. Director Arthur Penn's decision to graphically recreate Bonnie and Clyde's historically accurate deaths by gun ambush was a Hollywood game-changer: Soon afterward, films began including similarly violent sequences, such as Sonny Corleone's and Tony Montana's bullet-riddled murders in The Godfather and Scarface , respectively.

Released: 2006

Memorable quote: "If you imagine I'm going to drop everything and come down to London before I attend to my grandchildren who've just lost their mother, then you're mistaken."

The Queen isn't just one of the best royal movies —it's one of the best movies period , thanks to Helen Mirren's Oscar-winning work as Queen Elizabeth II. Who could forget that moment when the queen, alone in the Scottish Highlands, finally unleashes tears after days of pent-up grief, only to notice a beautiful stag approaching? This film may be the closest the general public will ever get to understanding what was happening within the royal family in the aftermath of Princess Diana's untimely death in 1997.

And even then, we can never know for sure: The Q ueen was written by Peter Morgan, who also created the juicy Netflix series The Crown . Both the movie and the TV series are classified as "historical fiction," because it is impossible for Morgan to know exactly what was discussed behind the royal family's notoriously closed doors.

A League of Their Own

Released: 1992

Memorable quote: "There's no crying in baseball!"

During World War II, with most American men off fighting for their country, Major League Baseball was on the brink of failure. To keep the national pastime alive—and to boost morale—the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League was born. Nearly 50 years after the AAGPBL's inception, A League of Their Own finally told the story of this groundbreaking sports decision and quickly joined the roster of classic family movies , courtesy of performances by Hollywood A-listers including Geena Davis, Tom Hanks and Madonna.

Although all the characters in the film were fictional—and the plot was restricted to the White, heterosexual experience— A League of Thei r Own still had a major impact on movie-going audiences. In 2022, Prime Video released a reimagined series based on the movie, but this time around, A League of Their Own not only included Black and LGBTQ+ characters, their stories were central to the narrative.

Dallas Buyers Club

Memorable quote: "AIDS … I got AIDS. Won't you come in, join the party."

Dallas Buyers Club is based on the true story of Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey), a Texas man diagnosed with AIDS in the mid-1980s. Woodroof, as in the movie, spearheaded a drug distribution service—called the Dallas Buyers Club—that provided unapproved AIDS treatments to patients unable to afford AZT, the commonly prescribed drug to AIDS patients at the time.

McConaughey earned a Best Actor Oscar for his performance as the (initially) homophobic Woodroof. The film does take creative license, however, with the character of Rayon (Jared Leto), a fellow AIDS patient. Leto received the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his portrayal, even though the transgender Rayon was a fictional creation meant to showcase Woodroof's developing tolerance for the LGBTQ+ community .

Released: 2011

Memorable quote: "When your enemy's making mistakes, don't interrupt him. Let him keep going. Say, 'Thank you.'"

Although the basic structure of M oneyball allows the baseball film entry into the hallowed genre of movies based on true stories, it doesn't quite stick to actual events. Yes, this Oscar-nominated movie is about how Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) used analytics to build a winning team. But the truth behind the team's success wasn't so simple: Many critics suggest the film—written by Aaron Sorkin, who also wrote The West Wing , one of the best TV shows of all time—left gaping holes in the narrative as a way to maintain its "Cinderella story." Also, Jonah Hill's character, Peter Brand, the economics whiz who introduces the idea of using analytics to Beane, is fictional, even though he's heavily based on Beane's real-life colleague, Paul DePodesta.

A Beautiful Mind

Released: 2001

Memorable quote: "I am only here tonight because of you. You are the only reason I am. You are all my reasons."

A Beautiful Mind is a fascinating biopic about the life of Nobel Prize winner John Forbes Nash Jr. (Russell Crowe). The film correctly presents Nash as a gifted mathematician who spent most of his life battling mental illness, but unfortunately, A Beautif ul Mind is one of the more historically inaccurate movies out there. In addition to poorly portraying Nash's paranoid delusions, the film ignores the nuances of Nash's complicated relationship with his wife, Alicia Larde (Jennifer Connelly). Although Nash married Larde in 1957, they divorced three years later. After several decades of living together platonically, the couple remarried in 2001. A Beautiful Mi nd portrays the Nash marriage as an uninterrupted love story.

All the President's Men

Released: 1976

Memorable quote: "Get out your notebook, there's more. Your lives are in danger."

The quintessential cinematic account of the Watergate scandal, All the President's Men is based on the book of the same name by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman). The film documents the eventual downfall of President Richard Nixon, starting from the 1972 break-in at the Watergate complex, followed by Woodward and Bernstein's meticulous reporting of the corruption within the Nixon administration, which then led to Nixon's resignation. While Woodward and Bernstein are rightfully credited as the faces of the Washington Post 's Watergate coverage, the film ignores the tireless behind-the-scenes work of their colleagues, who helped bring this story to light.

Released: 2014

Memorable quote: "Our lives are not fully lived if we're not willing to die for those we love, for what we believe."

Ava DuVernay's critically acclaimed drama about the historic 1965 voting-rights march led by Martin Luther King Jr. (David Oyelowo), from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, is a Black-history-movies viewing requirement. Specifically, because, other than a few exaggerations for dramatic effect, Selma is a historically accurate film. For example, DuVernay doesn't avoid depicting the brutal attacks the marchers received at the hands of Alabama state troopers that Bloody Sunday. There's even a haunting line from John Lewis (Stephan James), while crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge: In response to being asked if he can swim, the future Georgia congressman says there weren't any pools open to Black people where he grew up. That line of dialogue came directly from Lewis's memoir.

Erin Brockovich

Released: 2000

Memorable quote: "So before you come back here with another [lame] offer, I want you to think real hard about what your spine is worth, Mr. Walker. Or what you might expect someone to pay you for your uterus, Ms. Sanchez. Then you take out your calculator and you multiply that number by 100. Anything less than that is a waste of our time."

Julia Roberts won an Oscar for her portrayal of environmental crusader Erin Brockovich in this beloved biopic . The film presents Erin as an undereducated yet super-savvy mom who talks her way into a legal-clerk job, where she quickly discovers that a major energy corporation is knowingly contaminating the groundwater in a small California town. Before long, Erin is leading a class-action suit against Pacific Gas and Electric, without so much as a law degree. According to the real Erin Brockovich, the film depicting her life is, in her words, 98% accurate: While Roberts's Erin was a former Miss Wichita, Brockovich herself never held a beauty-queen title from Kansas. She was, in actuality, a former Miss Pacific Coast.

Almost Famous

Memorable quote: "If you think Mick Jagger will still be out there trying to be a rock star at age 50, then you are sadly, sadly mistaken."

Boasting an excellent soundtrack and some very memorable movie quotes , Almost Famous is a semi-autobiographical film based on writer-director Cameron Crowe's very real experiences as a teenage reporter for Rolling Stone in the 1970s. While Crowe did indeed cover acts like the Eagles, Led Zeppelin and the Allman Brothers Band, he made most of his main characters fictional for the sake of a linear narrative. This included his 15-year-old alter ego, William Miller (Patrick Fugit); Kate Hudson's ethereal groupie, Penny Lane; and the rock band at the center of the movie's story, Stillwater. But the most memorable, nonfabricated character from the movie has to be Philip Seymour Hoffman's music critic, Lester Bangs, who serves as William's sardonic tour guide through the debauched world of rock 'n' roll.

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Released: 2020

Memorable quote: "They don't care nothin' about me. All they want is my voice. Well, I done learned that. And they gonna treat me the way I wanna be treated, no matter how much it hurt them."

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is more dramatization than direct reenactment, but it's a stellar addition to Netflix's selection of movies based on true stories nonetheless. The film is an adaptation of August Wilson's 1982 play of the same name, which depicts a fractious 1927 recording session by famed blues singer Ma Rainey (Viola Davis). Although the plot is entirely fictional, Rainey herself is not, and the themes in the film resonate just as much today as they did in the 1920s: Rainey, a Black woman, is constantly fighting for control over her career from her White male producer and manager. The same can be said for Rainey's trumpeter, Levee (Chadwick Boseman, in his final role). Levee is a fabricated character, but he too is pushing for his own musical ideas to be heard, only for the White men in charge to dismiss him outright.

Released: 1990

Memorable quote: "As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster."

Martin Scorsese's Italian American mafia masterpiece is everything a gangster movie should be: A little drama here, a little humor there ("How am I funny?"), one incredible three-minute-long tracking shot inside the Copacabana and several unforgettable performances from the likes of Robert De Niro, Lorraine Bracco and the late Ray Liotta. Goodfellas follows the story of mobster Henry Hill (Liotta), who started his life of crime at an early age before eventually becoming an FBI informant.

As with most movies based on true stories, some creative license was taken with Goodfellas . In real life, Hill had one daughter and one son, while in the film he had two daughters, but Hill himself called the film 95% accurate.

Catch Me If You Can

Released: 2002

Memorable quote: "I never went to medical school. I'm not a lawyer, or a Harvard graduate, or a Lutheran. Brenda, I ran away from home a year and a half ago when I was 16."

Only Leonardo DiCaprio could make running from the law look sexy and sophisticated, whether it was posing as a Pan Am co-pilot, a kindly doctor or a shrewd lawyer. DiCaprio played con artist Frank Abagnale Jr. in Catch Me If You Can , a man who started passing bad checks as a teenager, eventually crisscrossing the United States and the world before he was apprehended in France at age 21.

While Abagnale and his crimes are real, the film may have taken even greater liberties than previously thought. It was always known that Tom Hanks's dogged FBI agent, Carl Hanratty, was an invented character, but a book published in 2021 suggests that most of Abagnale's story was fabricated after all: Public records prove that Abagnale was in prison during the time he was supposedly globe-trotting as an airline pilot. For a more accurate retelling of events, check out these riveting  true-crime documentaries that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

The Theory of Everything

Memorable quote: "There should be no boundaries to human endeavor. We are all different. However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. While there's life, there is hope."

This biopic , about theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne) and his tumultuous relationship with his first wife, Jane (Felicity Jones), was deemed "broadly true" by Hawking himself. Hawking, as depicted in the movie, suffered from a degenerative motor neuron disease that robbed him of his ability to speak and, for all intents and purposes, move his body. The scene where Jane and Hawking are trying to communicate through a spelling board, shortly after Hawking has lost his voice, is a heartbreaking one. The Theory of Everything doesn't avoid the difficulties in the Hawkings' 30-year marriage, which ended in divorce in 1995, but in reality, things weren't always as gentle and loving between the couple as the movie would have us believe.

Released: 2021

Memorable quote: "The Irish were born for leaving. Otherwise, the rest of the world would have no pubs."

Kenneth Branagh's critically acclaimed film Belfast is one of the newer movies out there based on a true story. While the characters and narrative are fictional, the movie is still a semi-autobiographical tale: The film's protagonist, Buddy (Jude Hill), is a 9-year-old boy living among the sectarian violence of the Troubles in Northern Ireland in 1969. This setting, and the subsequent decision by Buddy's father to move the family to England, very closely mirrors Branagh's early childhood. There are so many reasons Belfast belongs on any list of the best Irish movies , but if we had to pick one, it would have to be that joyful performance of "Everlasting Love" by Buddy's Ma and Pa (Jamie Dornan and Caitriona Balfe).

The Social Network

Released: 2010

Memorable quote: "You really don't need a forensics team to get to the bottom of this. If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you'd have invented Facebook."

The Social Network documents the rise of social media juggernaut Facebook. Jesse Eisenberg is pitch-perfect as the obnoxiously arrogant Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg, who, in the movie, ostensibly invents Facebook as a way to meet women after being dumped by a (fabricated) girlfriend. While this makes for a captivating narrative, it's not accurate, as Zuckerberg was already dating now-wife Priscilla Chan before Facebook even existed. The film also takes liberties with Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), portraying Zuckerberg's friend as a victim unfairly removed from the company. The truth was a bit more complicated, as Saverin ran unauthorized ads on Facebook ... for a rival company. None of this is mentioned in The Social Network .

Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Memorable quote: "I'm a 51-year-old who likes cats better than people."

Sometimes, movies based on true stories really can be stranger than fiction. Especially in the case of Can You Ever Forgive Me?  which stars Melissa McCarthy as charming curmudgeon Lee Israel, a writer who has fallen on hard times. When Lee is unable to secure an advance on her forthcoming book about Funny Girl inspiration Fanny Brice, she resorts to forging letters from deceased celebrities (including Brice)—and actually makes money through this scheme. That is, until the FBI catches on, sentencing Lee to house arrest and probation. For the most part, the film is pretty accurate, with details like Lee needing money to treat her sick cat stemming from the truth.

The King's Speech

Memorable quote: "I have a right to be heard! I have a voice!"

This inspirational story of how King George VI (Colin Firth)—the late Queen Elizabeth II's father—overcame a debilitating stutter just in time to lead the United Kingdom in the Second World War was a critical darling and an Oscar winner. (And hey, when else would you get to hear a monarch repeatedly drop an F-bomb?) The movie's main focus is the relationship between the king and his speech therapist, Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), the latter of whom draws out his royal client's deep-seated traumas as a form of healing.

The King's Speech , however, like many films based on the royals, uses historical details as a basic structure but takes several creative liberties for the sake of a moving story. It's suggested His Majesty and Logue didn't start working together until around 1936 and that they clashed with each other initially. In reality, Logue and the future king had known each other since 1926, and they got along almost instantly.

The Pianist

Memorable quote: "If I'm going to die, I prefer to die in my own home. I'm staying put."

The Pianist is based on the autobiography of the same name by a Polish-Jewish Holocaust survivor and musician named Wladyslaw Szpilman. In the film, Szpilman is portrayed by Adrien Brody, who gives an indelible, Oscar-winning performance of a man who is determined to survive the Nazi-sanctioned killings of his people. There are many gut-wrenching scenes in this movie, but the standout is one of the few hopeful ones: A starving, disheveled Szpilman is discovered by a German officer, and instead of being arrested, Szpilman is invited to play the piano (Chopin's "Ballade in G Minor"), offering both men a brief respite from their mutual despair.

Released: 1989

Memorable quote: "You can march like the White man, you can talk like him. You can sing his songs, you can even wear his suits. But, you ain't never gonna be nothing to him, than an ugly [ ... ] chimp in a blue suit."

War movies based on true stories are some of the most iconic ever made, and that includes Glory , a tribute to one of the first Black regiments in the Civil War, the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment. While most of the characters in the film are fictional—Matthew Broderick's character, Col. Robert Gould Shaw, who commanded the 54th regiment, is one of the few real-life figures portrayed— Glory 's impact on audiences is a powerful one: Denzel Washington earned his first Academy Award for his performance as Private Silas Trip, a formerly enslaved man who, in an evocative scene, is publicly whipped for procuring basic necessities for his fellow soldiers.

The Irishman

Released: 2019

Memorable quote: "You always charge a guy with a gun! With a knife, you run away."

Considering The Irishman is a gangster movie directed by Martin Scorsese and stars both Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, both of whom portray actual mobsters (Frank Sheeran and Jimmy Hoffa, respectively), the entertainment factor is a given. The film's pedigree makes it easy to assume The Irishman is highly accurate as well. But as it turns out, even Scorsese admits that in the case of The Irishman, a compelling story was more important than, well, facts. The movie is based on I Heard You Paint Houses, a 2004 book written by former homicide detective Charles Brandt. But many of Frank Sheeran's claims in the book about his involvement in Jimmy Hoffa's death have been refuted by investigative reporters and FBI agents.

Released: 1995

Memorable quote: "Houston, we have a problem."

Apollo 13 is one of those feel-good, patriotic movies , and not just because Tom Hanks is the star. In April 1970, the Apollo 13 lunar mission—helmed by astronauts Jim Lovell (Hanks), Jack Swigert (Kevin Bacon) and Fred Haise (Bill Paxton)—is unexpectedly aborted when an onboard explosion occurs. The shuttle begins losing oxygen rapidly as well as its electrical supply, forcing the astronauts into a race against time to return to Earth safely.

While the film received significant praise for its accuracy depicting historical events, its most famous line, delivered by the incomparable Hanks, was the result of considerable creative license: Jim Lovell never said, "Houston, we have a problem." It was actually Jack Swigert, who gave the SOS to Mission Control, who said, "OK, Houston, we've had a problem here."

Memorable quote: "This city, this whole country, is a strip club. You've got people tossing the money, and people doing the dance."

Hustlers is one of those movies based on true stories that seems like it was completely made up, when in actuality, the film is far more accurate than you might think. Adapted from Jessica Pressler's 2015 New York magazine article "The Hustlers at Scores," Hus tlers is about several New York City strippers who, in the aftermath of the 2008 recession, scam the unrepentant wealthy men behind the financial crisis.

The names of the film's main characters are fictional, but the backstories of Destiny (Constance Wu) and Ramona (Jennifer Lopez) closely resemble those of the real-life women profiled in Pressler's article. There were some changes made in the movie, however, to make Destiny and Ramona more sympathetic: Nothing in Pressler's article suggested that Destiny was hustling to support her grandmother or that Ramona was doing so to provide for her children.

Zero Dark Thirty

Memorable quote: "I'm going to smoke everyone involved in this op, and then I'm going to kill bin Laden."

Zero Dark Thirty is a riveting dramatization of the manhunt and military raid that killed Osama bin Laden. The film stars Jessica Chastain as Maya, a CIA analyst instrumental in tracking down the terrorist behind 9/11 at his Pakistan compound. For privacy reasons, the characters in Zero Dark Thirty , including Maya, are fictional, even though many are based on actual CIA operatives and military personnel directly involved in the bin Laden mission. Chastain's performance as the tenacious Maya, as well as director Kathryn Bigelow's tense recreation of the Navy SEALs' infiltration of bin Laden's compound, puts Zero Dark Thirty on most lists of the best dramatic movies of the 2000s.

BlacKkKlansman

Memorable quote: "God bless White America."

Back in the 1970s, Ron Stallworth, the first Black officer in the Colorado Springs Police Department, achieved the impossible: He infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan through a series of phone calls and a White colleague who served as Stallworth's in-person proxy. BlacKkKlansman , director Spike Lee's adaptation of Stallworth's memoir , is a relatively truthful take on this story, though Lee claims at the start of the film that not everything is 100% accurate. While real-life figures like Stallworth (John David Washington) and Klan Grand Wizard David Duke (Topher Grace) appear, the biggest creative license in the movie is demonstrated through Adam Driver's character, Detective Philip "Flip" Zimmerman. Zimmerman is a fictional stand-in for Stallworth's inside man, as this person's identity was kept concealed even in the original memoir.

The Imitation Game

Memorable quote: "Do you know why people like violence? It is because it feels good. Humans find violence deeply satisfying. But remove the satisfaction, and the act becomes … hollow."

This biopic about English cryptographer Alan Turing is equal parts enthralling and devastating, because it's as much about Turing's incredible achievements as his tragic personal life. Benedict Cumberbatch embodies the brilliant mathematician who decrypted the German military code machine Enigma during World War II. (Turing's work in code-breaking is believed to have accelerated the Allied victory.) But Cumberbatch leaves an unforgettable impression on audiences in the way he tackles Turing's lifelong misery as a gay man living in a country where homosexuality was a crime. In the film's final heartbreaking scene, Cumberbatch's Turing is a shell of his former self. The real Turing took his own life in 1954, as homosexuality wouldn't be legalized in the U.K. until 1967.

The Blind Side

Released: 2009

Memorable quote: "You threaten my son, you threaten me. You so much as cross into downtown, you will be sorry. I'm in a prayer group with the D.A., I'm a member of the NRA, and I am always packing."

You don't have to be a sports fan to fall in love with The Blind Side , or even an avid watcher of sports movies based on true stories. Because at its core, The Blind Side isn't really about football. It's about how family comes in all different forms. The film that won Sandra Bullock a Best Actress Oscar is the poignant tale of NFL star Michael Oher, a poverty-stricken Memphis teenager taken in by the wealthy Touhy family. Bullock plays no-nonsense matriarch Leigh Ann Touhy, who showers Michael with equal doses of love and motivation, helping him to achieve his full potential on the football field and beyond. We adore Leigh Ann because, as she demonstrates during a pressure cooker of a game, she'll go full mama bear on anyone who dares trash-talk her adopted son.

Released: 2015

Memorable quote: "If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one."

The mark of a great, accurate movie about journalism is when there is no 11th-hour plot twist—and the facts arise from painstaking reporting, not invented shock value. That's what makes Spotlight such a stellar film. It picked up a Best Picture Oscar for its unglamorous dramatization of The Boston Globe 's 2001 investigation into the Catholic Church's widespread and systemic pattern of sexual abuse. Led by an all-star cast, including Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo and Stanley Tucci, Spotlight takes few liberties with the narrative. The film directly portrays the real-life clergy, lawyers and Globe reporters involved with the case instead of replacing these main players with composite characters.

The Amityville Horror

Released: 1979

Memorable quote: “I’m coming apart! Oh, mother of God, I’m coming apart!”

Horror movies are creepy enough, but knowing that The Amityville Horror is based on a true story majorly ups the fright factor. In 1974, Ronald DeFeo Jr. murdered six of his family members in their Amityville, New York, home. About a year later, George and Kathy Lutz moved into the DeFeo house with their three young children. The Amityville Horror depicts the paranormal activity the Lutzes allegedly experienced during their brief stay in the house. From the moment they move in, George (James Brolin) and Kathy (Margot Kidder) are made to feel unwelcome by the house’s malevolent spirits, whether it’s a swarm of flies besieging a kindly priest (Rod Steiger) or streams of blood dripping down the walls. Although there’s never been any solid proof of the Lutz family’s claims, that doesn’t stop The Amityville Horror from being a chilling good time.

Released: 2003

Memorable quote: "I'm not a bad person. I'm a real good person."

Charlize Theron is nearly unrecognizable as Aileen Wuornos in Monster , but that kind of deep commitment to the character earned the actress a well-deserved Academy Award for her performance. Theron portrays the real-life Florida sex worker who murdered seven of her male clients between 1989 and 1990 before being executed in 2002. One of the best serial killer movies based on true stories, Monster doesn't turn Wuornos into an antihero, acknowledging that she was neglected and sexually abused by her family members, and grew up without any kind of stability. There is one invented scene, however, that may have caused audiences to unnecessarily sympathize with Wuornos: The film suggests that after a brutal rape by one of her clients, Wuornos embarked on her killing spree.

Memorable quote: "The horse is too small, the jockey too big, the trainer too old, and I'm too dumb to know the difference."

Seabiscuit is one of those book-to-movie adaptations that will warm your heart for days after watching. The film, based on Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand, stars Jeff Bridges, Tobey Maguire and Chris Cooper as the ragtag team behind an unlikely Depression-era champion racehorse. While Seabiscuit 's inspirational story is a true one—no one ever expected such a small horse to become such a big winner—the movie does take liberties to increase the dramatic tension in some spots. Most notably, the decision to portray jockey Red Pollard (Maguire) getting injured immediately before a major race. In reality, Pollard's injury occurred months beforehand.

Memorable quote: "Hi, Mom, it's me. I'm on the plane that's been hijacked. I'm just calling to tell you that I love you, and goodbye."

When terrorists hijacked four U.S. commercial flights on 9/11, one plane failed to hit its intended target: United Airlines Flight 93. Instead of striking the Capitol building or the White House (the exact Washington, D.C., location remains unknown), the plane crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing everyone onboard. United 93 attempts to piece together the events that led to the heroic, in-flight struggle that ultimately diverted the plane away from Washington.

Although the film uses the 9/11 Commission Report as source material, director Paul Greengrass invented many of the plot details to create a cohesive narrative befitting most Hollywood action movies . Since there were no survivors from United 93, the climactic scene depicting the passengers' fight to retake the plane had to be left to the filmmakers' imagination. But that decision made the scene no less powerful.

Hotel Rwanda

Released: 2004

Memorable quote: "There will be no rescue, no intervention for us. We can only save ourselves."

There's no shortage of drama in war movies based on true stories, which is why Hotel Rwanda remains such an engrossing film nearly 20 years after its release. The movie dramatizes how hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina (Don Cheadle) used his connections to shelter more than 1,000 refugees during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, which took place in the middle of an ongoing civil war in the African nation.

Cheadle gives a moving performance as Rusesabagina, portraying him as a compassionate individual working tirelessly to save his family and neighbors. According to several sources, however, this saintlike depiction may have been a Hollywood invention. Some survivors claimed Rusesabagina engaged in extortion, and in recent years, he was convicted of terrorism by the Rwandan government.

The Wolf of Wall Street

Memorable quote: "I will not die sober!"

When you combine Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio and a so-crazy-it-has-to-be-true story, the result is The Wolf of Wall Street , a movie that takes a deep dive into the decadent, drug-fueled world of uber-wealthy finance bros. The film follows Jordan Belfort (DiCaprio), a young, eager stockbroker entranced by the promise of endless wealth, and how he eventually resorted to corruption and fraud.

Since it's based on Belfort's memoir of the same name, The Wolf of Wall Street doesn't take much creative license. This is a polite way of saying that the unrestrained drug use, numerous sex workers and countless criminal activities featured in the film weren't invented. Even an insane scene in which Belfort's yacht capsizes in a storm and sinks actually happened. It's worth noting, however, that Jonah Hill's Quaaludes-addicted character, Donnie Azoff, is fictional—though he's loosely based on Belfort's real-life partner-in-crime, Danny Porush. If you're a movie buff or just want to save a few bucks while watching the best films around, check out this list of the best free streaming services .

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The story of netflix’s ‘baby reindeer,’ explained.

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Richard Gadd as Donny Dunn in Netflix's Baby Reindeer

Netflix’s latest viral hit, Baby Reindeer , is provoking strong reactions from viewers and critics, pulling off a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes .

The seven-episode limited drama series was written and created by Scottish comedian Richard Gadd, who stars as an alternate version of himself, Donny Dunn.

The series follows Donny on a downward spiral, as he meets a lonely woman named Martha (Jessica Gunning) who morphs from friend to stalker. Donny attempts to escape the grip of Martha’s obsession, while trying to navigate the lingering effects of past trauma.

From the very first scene, Baby Reindeer hooks the viewer in, with a visibly desperate Donny struggling to get a policeman to take his situation seriously.

Is ‘Baby Reindeer’ Based On A True Story?

Richard Gadd told Variety that the series is “emotionally 100% true,” with the events of the story “borrowed from instances that happened to me and real people that I met. But of course, you can’t do the exact truth, for both legal and artistic reasons.”

It’s one of those stories that is stranger than fiction; Baby Reindeer doesn’t sugarcoat the messy realities of life, and isn’t afraid to show the vulnerability of flawed people, or the flaws of vulnerable people.

The Best Romantic Comedy Of The Last Year Just Hit Netflix

Apple iphone 16 unique all new design promised in new report, rudy giuliani and mark meadows indicted in arizona fake electors case.

Gadd doesn’t reduce the story to that of stalker and victim, but emphasizes the humanity of all involved, and is brutally honest about his own mistakes in handling the situation.

Gadd was careful not to paint the character of Martha as "a monster" because he believes "she's unwell, and the system's failed her", he told The Independent .

Who Stars In Netflix’s ‘Baby Reindeer?’

Baby Reindeer revolves around a handful of strong, perfectly cast characters; Richard Gadd’s quiet charisma grounds the series, but Jessica Gunning’s performance as Martha is remarkably nuanced, as unsettling as she is sympathetic.

Gunning’s Martha uses joy and laughter as a mask, always on the verge of slipping. She’s constantly on guard for signs of rejection, visibly struggling to contain her rage, always writhing below the surface.

Nava Mau plays Teri, a trans woman who struggles to date Donny during his most volatile, dispiriting days. Teri is surely the most well-adjusted character here, but even she is drained by the stresses and trauma that emanate from Donny.

Tom Goodman-Hill gives a deeply chilling performance as Darrien, a successful writer who appears to be a thoughtful mentor to Donny, before revealing his true intentions.

Darrien is soft-spoken, composed, and capable of keeping kindness in his voice even as he violates Donny, in increasingly horrifying ways.

There Is No Moral To The Story Of ‘Baby Reindeer’

Baby Reindeer covers many sensitive subjects without ever preaching to the audience. It’s about loneliness, obsession, delusion, and how male victims of sexual violence struggle to be taken seriously, by society or even themselves.

“When a man gets stalked it can be portrayed in films and television as a sexy thing,” Gadd told The Times . “Like a femme fatale who gradually becomes more sinister. It doesn’t carry as much threat of physical violence, is less common and can be trivialised.”

Above all, Baby Reindeer is a story about the radioactive, corrosive nature of trauma, and all the messy ways it manifests in one’s life. The show never tells us how to feel about these things; it just depicts the fallout.

The story isn’t quite as simple as a nefarious stalker hunting a tragic victim, but a man who makes the mistake of enabling a delusional, dangerous woman. Donny certainly doesn’t deserve to endure Martha’s stalking, but he makes the situation worse by withdrawing from confrontation.

Donny makes terrible decisions throughout the series, and is all the more human for it; he’s always comprising to pursue greatness or avoid awkwardness, only to invite more chaos into his life.

Martha displayed red flags from their very first interaction, but Donny was at a low point and enjoyed her ridiculous flattery. Even at her most unhinged and obsessive, Donny is genuinely fascinated by her.

Gadd told The Guardian : “People are afraid to admit they made mistakes, and I think a lot of mistakes by humans are made through people-pleasing. You stay in a lie because it’s easier to circumvent the tension of a situation.”

The Ending Of Netflix’s ‘Baby Reindeer,’ Explained

While Gadd draws a parallel between his character and Martha from the beginning, it’s made clear that Donny is still a functioning member of society — Martha is not.

By the final episode, the similarities between the two are stronger than ever. At this point, Martha has been sentenced to a few months in prison and given a restraining order, but Donny is still obsessively listening to her voicemails.

In one of those messages, Martha alludes to an abusive childhood in which she remembered her only comfort — a toy reindeer, the titular “Baby Reindeer.” At heart, Martha is desperately lonely and traumatized, just like him.

With the series closing on Donny in a similar situation to Martha, Gadd suggests that there is a fine line between artistic eccentricity and deep societal alienation.

Worse, Donny returned to his abuser and didn’t deliver some kind of righteous vengeance, but shared a civil conversation before accepting a job offer from him. Donny has done exactly what he feared he would, having chosen to pursue his dreams over his dignity and self-worth.

The ending is left ambiguous, as Donny has a chance at success by working for the man who raped him. Maybe he even has a shot at real happiness, but he’s still carrying the trauma that destroyed his life, and has placed himself back under the control of his abuser.

He might end up becoming Martha, if he hasn’t already.

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Movie Review: ‘Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare’ amps up a true-tale WWII heist

This image released by Lionsgate shows Alex Pettyfer, Alan Ritchson, Henry Cavill, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, and Henry Golding in a scene from the film “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.” (Daniel Smith/Lionsgate via AP)

This image released by Lionsgate shows Henry Cavill in a scene from the film “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.” (Daniel Smith/Lionsgate via AP)

This image released by Lionsgate shows Alan Ritchson in a scene from the film “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.” (Daniel Smith/Lionsgate via AP)

This image released by Lionsgate shows Eiza Gonzalez in a scene from the film “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.” (Daniel Smith/Lionsgate via AP)

This image released by Lionsgate shows Alex Pettyfer in a scene from the film “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.” (Daniel Smith/Lionsgate via AP)

This image released by Lionsgate shows Babs Olusanmokun in a scene from the film “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.” (Daniel Smith/Lionsgate via AP)

This image released by Lionsgate shows Danny Sapani in a scene from the film “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.” (Daniel Smith/Lionsgate via AP)

This image released by Lionsgate shows Cary Elwes in a scene from the film “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.” (Daniel Smith/Lionsgate via AP)

This image released by Lionsgate shows Henry Golding in a scene from the film “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.” (Daniel Smith/Lionsgate via AP)

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The latest Guy Ritchie flick “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” has a spine of true story to it, even if it does all it can to amplify a long-declassified World War II tale with enough dead Nazis to make “Inglourious Basterds” blush.

The result is a jauntily entertaining film but also an awkward fusion. Ritchie’s film, which opens in theaters Friday, takes the increasingly prolific director’s fondness for swaggering, exploitation-style ultraviolence and applies it to a real-life stealth mission that would have been thrilling enough if it had been told with a little historical accuracy.

In 2016, documents were declassified that detailed Operation Postmaster, during which a small group of British special operatives sailed to the West African island of Fernando Po, then a Spanish colony, in the Gulf of Guinea. Spain was then neutral in the war, which made the Churchill-approved gambit audacious. In January 1942, they snuck into the port and sailed off with several ships — including the Italian merchant vessel Duchessa d’Aosta — that were potentially being used in Atlantic warfare.

Sounds like a pretty good movie, right? The story even features James Bond author Ian Fleming, giving it more than enough grist for a WWII whopper. “Operation Postmaster” makes for a better title, too, than the ungainly “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.” Ritchie, however, already has an operation — last year’s “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre” — in his filmography.

Ritchie, who turned Sherlock Holmes into a bulked-up action star, has always preferred to beef up his movies. It’s a less-noted side effect of the superhero era that regular ol’ heroes have been supersized, too, as if human-sized endeavors aren’t quite enough anymore. And “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare,” in which a handful of operatives kill approximately a thousand Nazis, has a fine, brawny duo in Henry Cavill and Alan Ritchson.

In the movie’s opening scene, they’re relaxing on a small ship in the Atlantic when Germans rush aboard. After a few laughs and a Nazi monologue that plays like a poor man’s version of Christoph Waltz’s masterful oration in “Inglourious Basterds,” the duo makes quick mincemeat of them, leaving blood splattered across the henley shirt of Anders Lassen (Ritchson, a charming standout).

Not much has changed in Ritchie-land, though he’s swapped tweed for skintight tees and cable-knit sweaters in a rollicking high-seas adventure. As in the director’s previous movies, everyone — and, as before, nearly all male — seems to be having a good time. Likewise, Ritchie revels in his characters’ debonair nonchalance while meting out all manner of savagery.

This image released by Lionsgate shows Eiza Gonzalez in “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.” (Daniel Smith/Lionsgate via AP)

The assembled group of operatives are said to be delinquents and misfits, though they steadfastly adhere to the polite manners of past Ritchie protagonists. They may kill with bloodthirsty impunity but what really matters is upholding an old-school sense of style. When the undercover agents Marjorie Stewart (Eiza González, who silkily cuts like a knife through the film) and Mr. Heron (Babs Olusanmokun, excellent) ride a Nazi-controlled train on their way to Fernando Po, they look in disgust at the German sausages they’re served. Later, someone will say, “I hate Nazis not because they’re Nazis but because they’re so gauche.”

And in proficiently staged set pieces, Ritchie makes his own case for a bit of class. As a journeyman filmmaker now pumping out a movie a year, he’s in many ways grown to be a more complete director. He’s adept at giving the many members of his large ensemble moments to shine — including Henry Golding, Alex Pettyfer, Cary Elwes, Freddie Fox as Fleming, Til Schweiger as a barbaric Nazi and Rory Kinnear as Churchill.

And once the film — based on the nonfiction book by Damien Lewis — settles into a seedy, sunny West African setting and the nighttime heist finale, “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” proves a spirited, if grossly exaggerated diversion.

“The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare,” a Lionsgate release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for strong violence throughout and some language. Running time: 92 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

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• The True Story Behind the Surprise Netflix Hit <em>Baby Reindeer</em>

The True Story Behind the Surprise Netflix Hit Baby Reindeer

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Netflix series Baby Reindeer .

In his one-man play-turned-hit Netflix series Baby Reindeer , Scottish comedian Richard Gadd recounts the harrowing true story of how his experience with being stalked forced him to confront a buried trauma.

Playing a fictionalized version of himself named Donny Dunn, Gadd unpacks the years-long stalking and harassment campaign he endured at the hands of a middle-aged woman he refers to by the pseudonym Martha (played with a chilling intensity by Jessica Gunning) while struggling to make it as a stand-up and writer in London. As is depicted in the show, the stalking began in the wake of Gadd being groomed, repeatedly sexually assaulted, and raped by an older male TV industry mentor (named Darrien in the show and played by Tom Goodman-Hill)—an ordeal that left him reeling emotionally, questioning his sexuality, and wrestling with extreme self-loathing. Still, Gadd doesn't shy away from his own complicity in what transpired with Martha, frequently painting himself in a negative light as the story unfolds over the course of seven episodes.

“It would be unfair to say she was an awful person and I was a victim. That didn’t feel true,” he told The Guardian in 2019 following the sold-out inaugural run of the Baby Reindeer play. "I did loads of things wrong and made the situation worse. I wasn’t a perfect person [back then], so there’s no point saying I was."

When Gadd debuted his one-man show at the 2019 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, it had been two years since he had seen or heard from Martha. Three years earlier, while the stalking was still in full swing, he had won the festival's top prize for his comedy show Monkey See, Monkey Do , which explored his experience as a survivor of sexual violence. The Baby Reindeer Netflix series, which is currently at number two on the streamer's most-watched charts following its release last week, is an amalgam of the two stage shows.

"It felt like a risky thing—to do a 'warts and all' version of the story where I held my hands up to the mistakes I had made with Martha," Gadd wrote in a piece that accompanied the show's debut . "The foolish flirting. The cowardly excuses as to why we could not be together. Not to mention the themes of internalized prejudice and sexual shame that underpinned it all. The graphic details of the drugging and grooming and sexual violence I had experienced only a few years before...But equally I could not shy away from the truth of what had happened to me. This was a messy, complicated situation. But one that needed to be told, regardless."

Here's what to know about the true story behind Baby Reindeer .

What happened with Martha?

Similar to how the show begins, Gadd has said that the stalking started after he gave Martha a free cup of tea when she came into the London pub where he was working in 2015. “At first everyone at the pub thought it was funny that I had an admirer,” he told The Times . "Then she started to invade my life, following me, turning up at my gigs, waiting outside my house, sending thousands of voicemails and emails."

Over the next four and a half years, Gadd recounts that Martha sent him 41,071 emails, 350 hours' worth of voicemails, 744 tweets, 46 Facebook messages, 106 pages of letters, and a variety of strange gifts. Every email that appears in the Netflix series is a message that Gaad received in real life. She also harassed a number of people who were close to Gaad, including his parents and a trans woman (named Teri in the show and played by Nava Mau) whom he had begun dating shortly before the stalking began.

When Gadd tried to go to the police, he discovered that the laws surrounding harassment and abuse are, in his own words, "so stupid." Despite the fact that the show presents Martha as having been previously convicted on similar charges, Gadd was told he needed concrete evidence of direct threats for authorities to take any action.

"They look for black and white, good and evil, and that’s not how it works," he told The Independent . "You can really affect someone’s life within the parameters of legality, and that is sort of mad."

How do things stand today?

In the show, Martha ultimately receives a nine-month prison sentence and five-year restraining order for stalking Donny. In real life, Gaad has never disclosed the details of how the situation was resolved beyond the fact that he had "mixed feelings" about it.

"I can’t emphasize enough how much of a victim she is in all this," he told The Independent . "Stalking and harassment is a form of mental illness. It would have been wrong to paint her as a monster, because she’s unwell, and the system’s failed her."

As for how Gaad's sexual assault has continued to impact his life, the finale culminates in a closing sequence in which Donny shows up at Darrien's home to confront him only to accept an offer to work on his new show instead. A distressed Donny then finds himself at a bar where he is offered a drink on the house in a moment that flips his first interaction with Martha on its head.

"I think that was almost the most truthful scene of the entire show. What abuse does is it creates psychological damage as well as physical damage," Gadd told GQ . "There’s a pattern where a lot of people who have been abused feel like they need their abusers. I don’t think it was a cynical ending, it was showing an element of abuse that hadn’t been seen on television before, which is, unfortunately, the deeply entrenched, negative, psychological effects of attachment you can sometimes have with your abuser."

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Write to Megan McCluskey at [email protected]