The late British stage and screen actor Ian Charleson, who died of AIDS-related causes in 1990 at age 40, is mostly remembered for his role in the 1981 Oscar winner Chariots of Fire. That inescapable attachment haunts Charleson, played with raw determination, grace and an almost overwhelming depth of feeling by Andrew Scott in Elsinore, a tremendously moving account of the final year in the Scottish actor’s life. When his agent reminds him that he starred in one of the most celebrated films of all time, Charleson shoots back: “And all anybody can remember about it is the theme music.” 

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.

While Charleson’s heroic run of 24 performances in the title role of Hamlet is as much a part of London theater lore as the abrupt exit from Richard Eyre’s 1989 production of Daniel Day-Lewis, it will be less familiar to audiences farther afield.

The script by Stephen Beresford (Pride) lives and breathes the stage community and its cozy familial camaraderie, from actors and directors to wardrobe, makeup and tech personnel. The bustle of theater luvvies all fondly addressing one another as “darling” will be especially amusing for audiences with any exposure to that world.

As a film about a painful chapter in queer history, it mines considerable humor from the extent to which gay slang seeps into the entire milieu, regardless of sexuality.

One hilarious example is Monica Dolan, marvelous as Linda Tolhurst, the National’s stage door supervisor for 50 years and counting. Charleson was already chummy with the building’s fixtures after playing Sky Masterson in the company’s smash 1982 Guys and Dolls revival; when he arrives for the first table read after being cast to replace Day-Lewis as Hamlet, Linda greets him dryly with, “’Ere she is, Takeover Tina!”

While Charleson initially established himself as a stage actor, his primary international recognition came from back-to-back best picture Oscar winners Chariots of Fire and Gandhi. But despite working steadily, he struggled to keep the momentum of a screen career going. Growing tired of all the waiting around on film shoots for mostly unrewarding projects, Charleson became anxious to get back to the theater, especially given the ticking clock of his HIV+ diagnosis.

Stone’s film shows the confusion of backstage workers and fellow cast when Day-Lewis collapses and then walks offstage during the Act I scene on the castle ramparts in which Hamlet encounters his father’s ghost. While the screenplay doesn’t go into the then-rising star’s reasons for abandoning the production, it’s no secret that Day-Lewis was unsettled by a connection to his own father’s absence, even if his exit was widely attributed to exhaustion. 

That footnote in London theater history creates an opportunity for Charleson, who previously played Hamlet though believed he was neither famous nor posh enough ever to land the role at the National. When he is approached by Eyre — identified only as Richard (Johnny Flynn) — who had directed him in Guys and Dolls, Ian feels duty-bound to inform him of his medical condition. 

The first appearance of a lesion on his forehead — after inspecting every inch of his body with a hand mirror each day — marked Ian’s progression to full-blown AIDS. Richard automatically assumes he will be unable to take on the demanding role, but Ian’s passion and drive convince him, with both men agreeing to keep his illness quiet. 

A lovely scene on cruisy Hampstead Heath takes creative license with the formation of the London chapter of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, drag nuns advocating for AIDS awareness and safer sex practices. (In reality, that group didn’t appear in the British capital until the early ‘90s.) Ian asks Sister Frigidity of the Nocturnal Emission (Kadiff Kirwan) how long he has left, prompting the veiled activist to summon a young man from elsewhere in the park, still alive two years after his first lesion appeared. 

Instantly recognizing the mark on Charleson’s face for what it is, the National’s wardrobe master (Paul Chahidi) sends him to see Dr. Margaret Johnson (Olivia Colman), a U.K. pioneer of HIV and AIDS treatment. Colman is in blazing form, her clipped manner contrasting with the medic’s self-evident compassion. Instructing Ian to start coming for daily clinic checkups, she makes no effort to hide her anger that the actor is increasing his risk of decline by placing himself in a high-pressure situation. Developments with the terse character later in the film are profoundly affecting.

Scenes at the clinic, where gay men constantly encounter friends and ex-lovers receiving treatment at various stages of the illness, are a sharp evocation of a time when the proliferation of men looking suddenly gaunt and weak sparked terror in the entire queer community.

Charleson’s vibrantly drawn inner circle of friends is led by his bestie, casting director Patsy Pollock (Billie Piper), her daughter Alice (Sadie Soverall) and his constant companion Sean (Matthew Beard). The latter is identified, like Eyre, only by his first name, but the character is based on Sean Mathias, who directed Charleson that year in an all-star benefit performance of Martin Sherman’s play Bent, about pink-triangle persecution in Nazi Germany.

One of the most fascinating insights into queer history comes with the appearances of iconoclastic director Derek Jarman (David Dawson), a friend for whom Charleson had played a punk angel in 1978’s Jubilee. As his own illness progresses, Derek urges Ian to go public about his health, to help destigmatize AIDS and hammer home the reality of the plague for Brits outside of LGBTQ circles. 

This brings up the conflicts for gay actors at the time who felt the need to keep their sexuality hidden for fear of career damage. “You have a responsibility to the dead, to the dying,” Derek tells him. Reflecting on his choice to stay silent (until after his death) Ian says, “Of course, in the theater no one gives a fuck.” But there was more at stake back then — and still to some extent now — for actors seeking on-camera work.

For anyone who recalls Jarman’s seismic influence on queer cinema with uncompromising films like Sebastiane, The Angelic Conversation, Caravaggio and Edward II, hearing the director say “Ian, remember me” with the knowledge that any encounter could be their last cuts deep. The same goes for Charleson visiting him at the fisherman’s cottage in coastal Dungeness where he lived at the time, when Jarman tells him that he’s going blind. His loss of vision shaped his experimental swan-song feature, 1993’s Blue.

If all this makes Elsinore sound like a film primarily for a niche audience of queer historians, that’s not the case. As Charleson digs into Hamlet rehearsals, insisting on working late even when he’s physically diminished, Scott conveys the actor’s dedication to his craft with both self-sacrifice and hubris. As Richard says of the play: “It’s about being alive and becoming dead.” 

While Stone is not always the most subtle of directors and Beresford’s dialogue often doesn’t tread lightly, a scene in which Ian gathers the entire cast to give an honest account of his condition — after being forced into a hiatus when he is hospitalized during previews — is as heartwarming as it is wrenching. But it’s in the performance scenes that Scott truly elevates the material, drawing on intersections between the Shakespearean role and Ian’s own thoughts of mortality.

Many audiences will be wrecked by pretty much the entire second half of the movie, the final scenes in particular, in which editor Valerio Bonelli crosscuts between the stage performance and Ian’s bedroom at home, where he is fading fast, comforted by Patsy. When Laertes tells the wounded prince at the end of the Act 5 sword fight, “Hamlet, thou art slain,” I was a mess.

While the fire at the core of the film is all Scott, in a physical, psychological and emotional performance that leaves nothing on the table, there’s gorgeous work throughout the ensemble. Colman superbly nails the seeming contradiction between professional medical detachment and humaneness. Piper — whom Stone directed on stage to huge acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic in his adaptation of Lorca’s Yerma — embodies the cherished female friend who is a sustaining force in the lives of so many gay men. And an unrecognizable Flynn makes Eyre a shining example of the director as nurturer and protector. 

There are standout moments for Luke Thompson as Georgie, a composite character representing Ian’s past relationships; Juliet Stevenson as Sylvia Sims, portrayed as a grand dame of British thespianism while playing Gertrude in the National production; Beard as a friend whose selfless devotion to Ian’s care is on par with Patsy’s; and Heartstopper’s Joe Locke as an admiring young actor hungry for mentorship, befriended by Ian at the clinic. 

The most devastating scenes for many will be those with Ian’s parents, Jean (Georgie Glen) and Jack (Peter Mullan), working-class Scots confronted with the double whammy that their son is not only gay but dying, a confessional ordeal common to many AIDS patients at the time. Both actors are wonderful, with Jean’s anguish immediately apparent and Jack’s sputtering to the surface in a delayed reaction in the hospital car park.

It’s a nice touch that one of Charleson’s surviving Chariots of Fire castmates, Nigel Havers, pops up as an AIDS clinic donor, alongside Ian’s close friend and University of Edinburgh classmate, fellow actor Hilton McRae. The latter is the longtime husband of Lindsay Duncan, Charleson’s co-star in a landmark 1988 National Theatre production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. There’s a nice “friends and family” aspect to these and other connections.

Whatever weaknesses there are in the direction and script, the film makes enormous gains in intimacy and authenticity by eliminating any of the barriers of outsider observation. The full-throated investment in the parallel queer, theatrical, medical and outpatient communities is unquestionably personal. 

Stone relies more than necessary on Stefan Gregory’s lush orchestral score to push emotional buttons. But the strategic use in one joyously tender scene of The Ethel Merman Disco Album — once a cringey embarrassment, now a beloved bit of queer pop cultural kitsch — will spark fun associations for many gay men over a certain age. The Merm belting out “There’s No Business Like Show Business” to a disco backbeat might be a million brassy miles from Shakespeare, but Elsinore lovingly folds those two extremes together.

As she finishes transcribing what will become one of her husband’s most enduring masterpieces, Anna Dostoevskaya (Aimee Lou Wood) cannot contain her excitement: “This is our best novel yet!” She quickly corrects herself, of course — “I mean, your best novel” — but by then, we understand she had it right the first time.

Sure, those might be Fyodor’s words on the page, and his name on the cover. But as Malgorzata Szumowska and Michal Englert’s shrewd, playful The Idiot(s) reminds us, not even singular geniuses really do it all alone. If the film ultimately overstays its welcome, it’s hard to fault it for wanting to let this unsung companion luxuriate, for once, in the spotlight.

As Anna, Wood projects both unpolished brightness and an impressive force of will; it’s a mesmerizing combination that keeps the character from ever feeling like a mere victim of her circumstances, even as her life takes the harsh turns of, well, a Russian novel. If anything, the character’s initial introduction calls to mind Wood’s earlier breakout role on The White Lotus. Here as there, she’s the sweetly enthusiastic romantic partner to a grumpy older dude who seems determined to hate the new country they’re visiting from the moment he sets foot on it.

It’s just that in this case, her S.O. is not some revenge-driven man of mystery but a writer drowning in debt and stymied by writer’s block. But The Idiot(s) makes clear right away that it isn’t interested in the usual serious biopic clichés about serious men doing serious things. This Fyodor, played by Johnny Flynn as a comically exasperating combination of buffoonish confidence, abject self-pity and childish petulance, is first seen glowering at a woman peeling hard-boiled eggs on the train, a fantastically overwrought classical soundtrack underlining the unreasonable intensity of his moods.

He says things like “Tolstoy’s gonna shit himself” (of the novel he, Fyodor, is definitely for sure gonna start writing any day now) and “Kick me in the face” (to Anna, as part of a kinky foot-fetish debasement ritual). It’s not that the filmmakers doubt his talent as an author — the caption to that aforementioned opener, “9 a.m., the last days of November, during the thaw,” is the first of multiple affectionate nods to Dostoevsky’s The Idiot — so much as they recognize that reverence for a person’s work need not necessarily translate to admiration for his personality.

The couple have arrived in Germany ostensibly so Fyodor can work on his next project. The creatively tortured, easily distracted Fyodor, quicky sets about doing anything but. When he’s not out partying with the very upper-crust literati he claims to disdain, including rival scribe Ivan Turgenev (Christian Friedel) and his coquettish girlfriend (Vicky Krieps, alluring but underused), he’s blowing all his money at the roulette table. When he is at home, he oscillates between drunken glee and utter despair. Whenever Anna sneaks a peek at his notebooks, she finds either blank pages or doodles of naked women, not a word of The Idiot in sight.

It would all be very depressing for poor Anna, were it not for the fact that The Idiot(s) does its best to keep the phrase “poor Anna” from entering your mind for as long as it can. For one thing, the film is too busy having fun to let itself stew in misery. It’s stuffed with mischievous anachronisms like a 19th-century performance of “Take On Me,” the A-Ha hit whose pleading lyrics could double Fyodor’s entreaty to a fed-up Anna. And it delights in outrageous rococo details, like a restaurant dessert that’s essentially chocolate mousse being squeezed out the anus of a porcelain dog.

More crucially, the screenplay, by Szumowska, Englert, Kasper Bajon and Brid Arnstein, paints Anna not as some passive observer to Fyodor’s bad behavior but an active (albeit only fitfully successful) guardrail against it. As her husband gives himself over to his worst impulses, it’s Anna who nudges him to work, who tries to get the bills paid, who even, as things get dire, secretly writes and submits pages on his behalf to mollify his angry publisher. While Anna may not always be in control of her own fate, there’s never any doubt she’s in possession of her own agency.

True, she’s making the choices she does in part because she has few others: Living in a foreign land without even enough cash for a train ticket home, Anna would have a tough time leaving Fyodor even if she’d wanted to. But, The Idiot(s) makes it clear, she doesn’t especially want to.

Anna loves Fyodor truly and stubbornly, and he loves her back in his own inconsistent and imperfect way. Key to the film’s portrait of their marriage is the frisky chemistry that courses between them when they’re holding hands in bed or engaging in silly dirty talk about hard-boiled eggs. For all the relationship’s intolerable flaws and harrowing lows, it’s not without true affection.

Anna’s indulgence for his antics is another thing, however. As the situation deteriorates to the point that Anna’s pawning off her chamber pots and eating scraps off the streets, it becomes harder and harder for us as viewers to forgive his sins. Perhaps that’s why The Idiot(s) gives over large chunks of its bleaker second half to absurd dream sequences.

But arriving as they do in the umpteenth iteration of the same repetitive cycle (Fyodor losing his money, begging Anna for more, losing it all again and then some), these sequences land not only as unnecessary drags on an already puffy run time but as an uncharacteristic failure of confidence. We don’t require a clip of Fyodor fleeing from a boulder-sized roulette ball to tell us he’s being crushed by his gambling addiction when we’ve already seen that he is; we don’t need to see him plead against charges of chauvinism before a guillotine when we know exactly how poorly he treats Anna.

Then again, if the clunky pacing of the film’s latter chapters remind us of anything, it’s how long Anna toiled to help bring The Idiot into the world. Compared to all those long years, what’s a few extra minutes of sitting and watching her struggles on a screen? “Every Russian writer should have a wife like you,” Ivan marvels at one point, moved by Anna’s strenuous efforts to help her ungrateful and oblivious husband. What The Idiot(s) impishly suggests, by demonstrating all the invisible but essential labor Anna’s poured into his books, is that a lot of them probably already did.

Fresh from the Venice Film Festival where he unveiled Ink, director Danny Boyle arrived in Telluride for the North American premiere of his drama about Rupert Murdoch’s launch of the British Tabloid The Sun in 1969.

Boyle, looking none the worse for international travel, introduced the film Friday night by noting that some people are misinterpreting the title.

“It’s not a movie about tattoos,” he informed the Telluride audience, “which a lot of people assume it is.”

The ink in question here refers to the substance necessary to print newspapers by the millions. Australian native Guy Pearce stars as Australian native Murdoch, the media baron (dubbed “the Dirty Digger” by his British rivals), who took a lightly regarded broadsheet and turned it into the UK’s most popular rag. His key move was to recruit Larry Lamb as editor, a talented if perhaps overlooked veteran of Fleet Street, the traditional home of British newspapering. Jack O’Connell stars in that lead role.

Boyle introduced O’Connell, saying, “I’d worked with this guy on 28 Years Later, but he was in a tiny bit at the end of the film, a really daft bit at the end of the film… And I wanted to work with him so much.”

In his review, Deadline’s Pete Hammond calls Boyle “the perfect filmmaker to bring this world to life. It’s set in 1969 London as the brash if trash visionary Murdoch and his handpicked editor-in-chief set out to turn a flop into a top that eventually would bleed into the entire world. It’s an era before the internet and social media demanded faster and furiouser hits and clickbait to get attention, when people got their news by picking sides.”

Hammond continues, “Adapted by James Graham from his Tony- and Olivier-winning 2018 play, Boyle has created a bright, fast-paced and lively film that matches the energy this band of questionable warriors had just after man first walk on the moon — perhaps triggering something that in different ways would turn out to be just as significant in the long run.”

Ink, which will be premiere on Netlix in January, played at the Werner Herzog Theater in Telluride (ironically, Herzog himself has been busy in Venice, premiering his latest drama Bucking Fastard, starring Rooney and Kate Mara).

“I’ve never been in the Werner Herzog Theater, and that is a privilege beyond belief,” the Oscar-winning director said. “But even beyond that, to be showing a film in a theater named after him, is to be part of the Telluride Festival… When you make a film, you feel lost a lot of the time. It’s a weird thing because when you appear promoting it, you look full of confidence, but you feel lost [while making it]. And when you get signals that someone might like the film, it means so much to you. And Julie [Huntsinger, executive director of Telluride] was the first to ring up and to say she was going to invite it to Telluride. And I cannot tell you what it’s like. It’s the rush of the ocean to the heart for a filmmaker. So, bless you, Julie, and bless you, Telluride.”

Boyle evidently is carving out time to see some other films while in Telluride.

“Was anybody at the Wild Horse Nine screening?” he asked the crowd. “There was a competition for a free holiday in Mallorca before that film. Well, there’s nothing for you [here]. I’m so sorry. It’s just the movie.”