A discussion of Elsinore dir. Simon Stone
*The following contains spoilers for Elsinore, dir. Simon Stone, starring Andrew Scott.
Did you feel that the montages were impactful or overdone?
SYL: Yeah, so I’ve seen a lot of discourse online about the use of montage in the film—because I know that they filmed Andrew Scott doing like two thirds of the entire show—
SOF: Oh, I didn’t know that!
SYL: Yep—and then they, you know, cropped it up into a bunch of these montage moments to show the process, and I found that a lot of people online were saying that it was distracting and that they wanted to see more of the actual stuff that was in the montage.
I didn’t feel that way at all when I saw the movie. I didn’t think that the montage and the editing overall took me out of the story; I thought that it was well done.
I understand why people thought that way, but I don’t know. I’d definitely be interested to see it with less montage—if there was a cut of the movie that didn’t have as much, but I didn’t walk out of the theatre thinking that it was overkill.
SOF: I didn’t even notice the montages until I saw people pointing them out, after I went to log it on Letterboxd. Everybody on there was like, “Five stars for Andrew Scott, but the movie was just montage.”
I guess there /was/a lot of montage, but I felt like it had to make time pass somehow, and if you’re gonna make the artistic choice, you might as well commit to it.
I think your point about the process was important because so much of the movie is about the process: whether it’s the process of acting, or the process of dying. And to highlight that…and also like they can’t just show all of /Hamlet/, that’s like a three to four hour play. You have to deal with it somehow, and I thought that they did a good job. They showed how much fun he was having on stage doing it, and that’s what’s important.
And as for the other montage[s], it definitely didn’t take anything away in my opinion. Maybe retrospectively, now that it was pointed out to me, I would’ve cut one of the lesser montage moments. But it didn’t harm my experience of the film as I was watching it for the first time.
Saddest scene?
SOF: My saddest scene, I think, was not the scene where he comes out to his parents, but the scene where his dad breaks down in the parking lot after. And his friend is comforting him, and I think it painted a really human portrait of these uptight British parents, very classically uncomfortable with this unknown kind of thing. And the way that, at the end of the day, that’s just a sign [that] he’s dying, and that’s that. And how much empathy the friend shows for the father who sits, silently watching the whole other coming out scene. I thought it was really beautifully done with the snow and everything.
SYL: My saddest scene, which is not… there’s so many sad scenes in the show. This is actually one of the happier ones, but it’s the one that left me emotionally a wreck, which is when Andrew Scott’s character finds the Bette Midler CD in the AIDS ward. And, he goes to the rest of the inpatients in the hospital and they all put on “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” And then they perform it, and they’re all finding such joy in the worst situation ever… and I was sitting in the theatre, bawling my eyes out, like a little baby.
How did this film speak to you as an artist?
SYL: Well for me, I do a lot of theatre. Whether that be acting, or directing, or designing. And so I’ve read Hamlet, time and time again. I think I first did it in high school? But anyway, it’s something that exists in the back of my mind. There’s not a lot of movies about theatre, and I think it was so well done. I found it really thought-provoking and wonderful to have such a mainstream movie about the beauty of theatre; and Ian Charleston’s whole thing is that he needs to play Hamlet in the National Theatre, which is just this massive space, in front of all these people. And it’s the feeling that performing Shakespeare is just the single greatest thing you can do in your life. I think that a lot of people don’t understand how impactful and electric those kinds of moments in life can be in performance, and so it was really meaningful for me as an artist to see that represented on screen.
SOF: The moments when Olivia Coleman—because I will never know the name of her character, she’s just Olivia Coleman to me. But anyway, Olivia Coleman is like;
“You need to live, I’m in the business of you living, and that’s what matters.”
And he goes;
“No, no, I’m playing Hamlet.”
And she goes;
“What about being alive?”
And he goes;
“Hamlet.”
And I think that just pure dedication to the art, and wanting to live for that, knowing what he knows… his purpose in life; he knows what he wants. And he knows his heart, and that he can’t float aimlessly when this [opportunity] is right in front of him. I thought that that was really thought-provoking and really spoke to that dedication, and those soul-consuming ties that art can have.