McK­ellen: Play­ing the Part

From Shakespeare’s Richard III to the white wiz­ard Gan­dalf, British thesp Ian McK­ellen is known for a num­ber of icon­ic roles on stage and screen. Direc­tor Joe Stephen­son explores the act­ing legend’s per­son­al jour­ney from bereaved young boy to gay activist and per­former in this delight­ful docu-por­trait. Based on 14 hours of inti­mate inter­views, McK­ellen is very much in charge of his per­son­al nar­ra­tive, offer­ing a fas­ci­nat­ing insight into not just his life, but what it means to be an actor.

The film opens with a mon­tage of pho­tographs tak­en from McKellen’s child­hood, and this runs into nuanced cin­e­mat­ic recon­struc­tions of key events, ie, his first encoun­ters with act­ing. It seems inevitable from these sto­ries that he would soon immerse him­self into this world, and we lat­er see him as he watch­es a pro­duc­tion from back­stage at his local the­atre, or par­tic­i­pates in the pitch­es of mar­ket stall traders. The win­dow­boxed fram­ing of these scenes and McKellen’s char­ac­ter voic­es dubbed over the var­i­ous actors, imbues the mate­r­i­al with a more endear­ing, mem­o­ry-like quality.

The film does not roman­ti­cise his life; the voiceover is earnest and hum­ble as our sub­ject delves into tragedy and achieve­ments alike. Footage of his jour­ney through Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty and his first for­ay into stage act­ing segues into the block­busters where he even­tu­al­ly earned fame.

When it comes to act­ing and activism, McK­ellen says that he has always been, ​“devot­ed to strangers”. He reflects on life as a clos­et­ed gay man and describes his role in the Stonewall move­ment and the fight against Sec­tion 28, a law passed in 1988 that pro­hib­it­ed the ​‘inten­tion­al pro­mo­tion of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty’ by any local authority.

McK­ellen is asked towards the end of the film what he thinks about most. ​“Death. Every day” is his mat­ter-of-fact reply and, in part, the film feels like a prod­uct of this con­tem­pla­tion of impend­ing mor­tal­i­ty. Just as he has already planned his own the­atri­cal memo­r­i­al, this doc­u­men­tary feels like the actor wrap­ping up his sto­ry before the inevitable flur­ry of posthu­mous hagiographies.

This touch­ing film sheds light on the life of an astound­ing man. Any­one who loves the arts should recog­nise some­one here who has ded­i­cat­ed their life to them.