McKellen: Playing The Part: Film Review

McKellen: Playing The Part: Film Review

Cast: Ian McKellen
Director: Joe Stevenson

The doco about Sir Ian McKellen reflecting on his life for the large part feels like a biography masquerading in parts as an autobiography.

Amiably put together by Stevenson and culled from some 14 hours of interviews, it's anchored by an early line from McKellen himself talking about his public appearance - "what side of Ian McKellen am I going to present?"

That's not to say that Stevenson's mix of archive footage of some superlative McKellen performances and the mellifluous tones of McKellen himself telling his story along with his ruminations don't combine to make a watchable piece.

In fact, in parts, it's the very opposite as McKellen lets you in on his life, his career trajectory and his activism - it's very much an intimate audience with McKellen that feels like an audiobook getting a select reading to a select few.

McKellen says he's best at playing show off parts by his own admission midway through the film, and it feels like a lot of his life has been a struggle, mixing career desires with who he was / is - but it's rare for McKellen: Playing the Part to really give you a major insight into the man himself, other than the barebones of his life story.

However, the break through comes maybe 7 minutes before the end of the film, where McKellen's asked what he thinks about.

It's here visibly that the mask drops, and we get an idea of what the man actually is - "Death..every day - I think about it; how it may come about," is a rare moment of candid unguarded pretension that speaks to the universal human condition.

And it's in this one singular moment that much of McKellen: Playing the Part is shown for what it could have been. Maudlin and melancholy in its final moments, with audio footage of McKellen weeping behind closed doors after the end of Waiting for Godot, the true person arises phoenix-life from the public persona. Coupled with comments about lack of family, lack of children and spending a "most enjoyable evening" planning his own funeral, McKellen's charm and charisma is laid bare in the most mortal of ways.

Ultimately, McKellen: Playing the Part is a perfectly passable documentary, a nice armchair telling of one ultimate thespian's rise to prominence, and whose humbling in the face of the universe makes him even more relatable.