Elsinore

Saturday, September 19: This screening will be presented with open captions.

Ian Charleson is widely known as the real-life star of TIFF ’81’s Chariots of Fire, the first People’s Choice Award winner to receive the Oscar for Best Picture. Its piano-led ubiquity in pop culture follows the Scottish actor everywhere, making him yearn less for Hollywood and more for his theatre roots. When Daniel Day-Lewis walks off stage as Hamlet at London’s National Theatre, the role of a lifetime appears for Charleson — but so does an AIDS diagnosis. Dream and nightmare collide as Charleson strives to command the stage and survive as long as possible.

Andrew Scott (TIFF ’25’s Blue Moon and Wake Up Dead Man) delivers a career-best performance in Elsinore, wondrously celebrating both Charleson and Hamlet on screen. Through Scott, each real and fictional man’s confrontation with death becomes visceral, profoundly moving, and resoundingly answers Shakespeare’s famed question with “to be.”

Olivia Colman brings a wellspring of empathy as a doctor treating Charleson and fellow gay men during the HIV epidemic, including a supporting turn from Heartstopper’s Joe Locke. Harnessing warmth and even wit, Queer Palm and BAFTA-winning screenwriter Stephen Beresford (TIFF ’14’s Pride) and director Simon Stone (TIFF ’15’s The Daughter) effectively fortify Charleson’s legacy in Elsinore, a courageous testament to the meaning of life and art.

ANITA LEE

Content advisory: sexual content, coarse language, crude content, mature themes