There's a version of this story that sounds like pure awards bait on paper. A celebrated actor, secretly dying of AIDS, takes on Hamlet at the National Theatre and delivers the performance of his career just weeks before his death. But then you look at who's actually making it and you stop being skeptical. Elsinore is directed by Simon Stone and written by Stephen Beresford, the writer behind Pride, one of the best films of the 2010s. This isn't a prestige factory exercise. The people involved actually care.
Andrew Scott plays Ian Charleson, the Scottish actor best known to film audiences as Olympic runner Eric Liddell in Chariots of Fire, the 1981 Best Picture winner. Charleson was also one of London's most respected stage actors, and in 1989, already gravely ill, he stepped in to play Hamlet at the National Theatre after Daniel Day-Lewis abruptly pulled out mid-run. His Hamlet run ended just eight weeks before he died at 40. Scott, who previously played the Danish prince himself in Robert Icke's acclaimed 2017 stage production, is the kind of casting that makes you feel like a film was always meant to exist.
Olivia Colman plays Charleson's doctor, and yes, this is the Fleabag reunion everyone quietly hoped would happen. Billie Piper, Johnny Flynn, Luke Thompson, Peter Mullan, and Joe Locke round out a cast so deep it's almost unfair. The director described the screenplay as "both heartbreaking and hilarious" and honestly that tracks with what Beresford pulled off with Pride, which never let grief swallow the warmth out of the room.
The film is opening the BFI London Film Festival on October 7, with almost the entire cast expected to show up at the Royal Festival Hall, which sits right next to the National Theatre where Charleson performed. That detail alone tells you how much this film means to the people who made it. It hits US theaters on November 20 via Focus Features, expanding through Thanksgiving and into December.
If you want to get ready for this one, go watch Chariots of Fire first. Charleson's performance in that film is the reason his name carried the weight it did in British theater. Then watch All of Us Strangers to remember exactly what Scott does when the material matches his level. Elsinore looks like it more than matches his level.
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