Austin Film Festival 2026

After a week of movies at the Austin Film Festival, the film I kept thinking about the next morning was the closing night film, Elsinore. I went to the Bullock IMAX expecting a strong performance from Andrew Scott. I got one, all right. I knew Ian Charleson’s face from Chariots of Fire, but I knew little about the man or his last role. I’d taught Hamlet for years, and I knew what the play asks of an audience. I’d given far less thought to what it asks of the actor who has to go out there and do it. What on earth made Charleson say yes when he was already so ill? By the time Scott walked onstage, I understood why he wanted to.

Charleson took on Hamlet at London’s National Theatre in 1989 after Daniel Day-Lewis walked out of the production. Charleson was gravely ill with AIDS, and it was his final role. Olivia Colman plays his doctor, and I enjoyed watching them together. She has every reason to tell him to slow down. He has a part to learn and precious little time to learn it. Colman is so good in those scenes. She shows how much his decision worries her and how well she understands why he’s made it. I could see her point, and I wanted him to go ahead anyway.

I taught Hamlet for years. I’ve seen it in several film versions, watched Ralph Fiennes play the role at the Hackney Empire, and stood as a groundling at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. I know those lines pretty well. What mesmerized me was how screenwriter Stephen Beresford and director Simon Stone weave the play through Charleson’s story and still make me hear it differently. By the time he gets onstage, we’ve seen him as a patient, a friend, and an actor trying to do his job. Here’s a man who knows his time is short, standing before a room full of strangers and asking, “To be, or not to be.” He also has to give them a good Hamlet. That second part matters. I loved that I could listen to Shakespeare and still be thinking about the man saying the words and how much he wanted to get them right.

And Andrew Scott! He’s marvelous – sheer perfection in acting. He plays Charleson with palpable connection and passion, and he masterfully portrays Charleson performing Hamlet in the play-within-the-play/story. Charleson can be funny and difficult, sometimes in the same breath, and he has a touch of the vanity you might expect from a man who knows how good he can be onstage. I liked him all the more for it. Scott gives him the impatience of someone who still has work to do. The rest of the cast is terrific, too. I especially liked Johnny Flynn as Richard Eyre, the director who has a production to keep going and an actor he believes can do the job. The people around Charleson have their own reasons for wanting him to succeed, and the film gives them room to show it.

By the time Charleson finally walked onstage, I’d spent so much of the film wondering how he’d get there that I’d almost forgotten I’d be watching him play the role. I admired the writing and direction throughout, but once Scott started speaking, I forgot to think about how it was all done. I just watched. For all the Hamlets I’ve seen, Elsinore left me wishing I’d been in the audience for Charleson’s final performances. What a way to close the festival. If I could give it more than 5 stars, I would.