Look out Matt Damon and John Malkovich — a new Best Actor contender has entered the chat. Simon Stone’s biographical drama Elsinore officially debuted at Telluride on Friday night, launching Andrew Scott into the Oscar race. The Emmy-nominated actor plays Chariots of Fire star Ian Charleson, who died of AIDS in 1990.
Prior to his death and still in the throes of his illness, Charleson gave one final command performance in an acclaimed National Theatre production of Hamlet. Stone’s film depicts that portion of the actor’s life, and surrounds Scott with a cast that includes Best Actress winner, Olivia Colman, as Charleson’s doctor, Doctor Who fan favorite Billie Piper as a warm-hearted casting director, and Johnny Flynn as the show’s director.
The first wave of reviews out of Telluride are largely effusive about Scott’s performance, even if the individual critics have varying opinions about the film itself. The Fleabag star is currently sitting at No. 6 on Gold Derby’s experts-only Best Actor leaderboard, but could see a surge as Elsinore continues its festival run at Toronto in the next week.
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John Malkovich
Wild Horse Nine
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Ryan Gosling
Project Hail Mary
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John Turturro
The Only Living Pickpocket in New York
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Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman is thumbs up on both Scott and the film, describing Elsinore as an “art-house crowd-pleaser” that will play well on the festival circuit and beyond. “Elsinore is about the shock and trauma of the AIDS epidemic,” he writes. “It’s about the culture of gay actors who felt compelled to hide their identities not out of shame but out of survival. It’s about the passion, and extraordinary heavy lifting, of performing the most profound and daunting of all of Shakespeare’s plays. And it’s about how all of this comes together in the quietly heroic person of Ian Charleson.”
The Hollywood Reporter‘s David Rooney is similarly upbeat, writing: “Scott’s searing dual performance — as Charleson and as Hamlet in a National Theatre production that became both the ultimate challenge and fulfillment of his professional career — makes Simon Stone’s film an emotional powerhouse even if it doesn’t avoid inspirational cliché. But it’s a vivid picture of London at the height of the AIDS crisis and a stirring gesture of gratitude to art, specifically theater, as a lifeline even when death looms large.”
Indiewire’s Ryan Lattanzio has a more mixed take, separating the artist — in this case, Scott — from the art. “A blond-headed Scott throws himself valiantly into the role of Charleson with the urgency and commitment of any of his best work, but the problem isn’t his,” he notes. “It’s that the movie surrounding him dulls the greatness of his performance with its conventional storytelling, and over-complication in post. …It’s a movie where every emotional beat worth lingering on, especially Charleson’s swan-song performances as Hamlet, is churned into a frenzied montage of editing that won’t let the material take a breath. Or the audience sink in.”
And over in The Wrap, Steve Pond compares Elsinore‘s Telluride debut to Hamnet‘s successful launch from the Colorado mountain town into the awards race last year. “On the heels of Hamnet… Elsinore is both a sign of the enduring power of Shakespeare’s drama and a film about that power,” he notes. “And while it may have a more limited life than Zhao’s critical favorite, with its eight Oscar nominations and $100-million-plus grosses, it packs an emotional punch and showcases one of Andrew Scott’s most shattering performances.”
