Heartbreak feels good in an Andrew Scott movie

In Elsinore, Scott’s performance is simultaneously intense and subtle, and what he does in both registers is remarkable. Scott plays Ian Charleson, the Chariots Of Fire star who can’t escape that movie’s long shadow and yearns to return to the stage. The opportunity arrives to perform at the National Theatre in London after Hamlet star Daniel Day-Lewis runs off stage, but this chance to play the role of a lifetime arrives just as Charleson’s AIDS complications worsen. He leans on his partner, friends, community, parents, and the theater company in order to take one last bow. 

The premise alone should be enough to get the tear ducts brimming, but Scott does more than coast on Stephen Beresford’s script (the two previously worked on the period piece Pride over a decade ago). Scott portrays the physically devastating toll the disease wreaks on Charleson, sapping his strength, inflicting pain and nausea, before pneumonia almost kills him. Not only is playing the part of Hamlet (something Scott really did on stage in 2017) taxing, so is living with this illness that, in 1989, was still extremely difficult to treat. 

Just as in All Of Us Strangers, the best parts of Scott’s performance are his most emotionally vulnerable, like when Charleson explains to his director (Johnny Flynn) that he wants to do this play no matter his illness, or when he collapses into the arms of his parents, who finally realize how sick their son has fallen. Charleson shares beautiful moments with friends in the AIDS ward and his best friend Patsy (Billie Piper), who stays with him in his final days. These allow Scott to wrestle with the finality of his condition, oscillating between the grief of leaving his loved ones and his frustration at the unfairness of it all. He shares a few confrontational moments with his first director, Derek Jarman (David Dawson)—who openly spoke of living with HIV/AIDS to fight against public prejudice before dying from its complications in 1994—who chided him about not publicly coming out earlier. Through their arguments, Scott expresses Charleson’s grief and rage over being forced to hide who he is, and the situation he’s been forced into so he can continue doing what he loves. Yet, his determination shines through this darkness in his stubborn exchanges with his doctor (Olivia Colman), who would rather see him quit acting and survive just a bit longer than play another role. 

In moments small and large, Scott cracks Charleson’s stiff upper lip, showing the full humanity of someone who tried desperately to hide his truth on stage, using his whole body to show affection, pain, and tenderness. At times, Scott holds hands with other characters—some of whom are suffering like Charleson and others who want to be there for him—exchanging few words with them, allowing instead the physical bonds between strangers and loved ones to speak for themselves. There’s a bashful side to Scott’s portrayal of Charleson, wanting so desperately to keep his illness from stealing his spotlight, that when he has to tell the cast and crew about his condition, the audience feels his mortification at the prospect. But Charleson is embraced by his community in multiple arenas, and Scott embodies the sense of relief that comes with finally feeling safe enough to lean on other people. After following Charleson on his arduous journey, through illness and brief moments of recovery, Scott finds the gratitude and joy of a performer celebrated for their hard work, both by his peers—who cheer him on backstage and throughout the National Theatre’s brutalist building—and the audience, moved night after night by his impassioned performance. 

Scott’s performance is reminiscent of the leads in David Lean’s Brief Encounter, people who stoically bury their heartbreak within their chest, but with a modern twist: Now, Scott is allowed to break open his character’s grief and desire for an audience to clearly see, giving catharsis to something once hidden. His forbidden love in Elsinore isn’t another partner, but his love of acting, and to be denied that pains him, to the point that he’s willing to risk his final months for just one last bow. He’s an incredible vehicle for heartbreak, because there’s always a lingering sense of “what if” to his mournful turns. What if this love is true? What if he really could connect with the past? What if he could make it to one last curtain? Scott’s heartbreaking performances, in Elsinore and elsewhere, always seem to yearn for more with warmth and clarity, leaving us haunted and moved by what could have been.