Kenneth Branagh as William Shakespeare and Judi Dench as Anne Hatheway in All Is True (Sony)

All is True is a rather melancholy and somewhat indulgent imagining of Shakespeare’s preoccupations during his superannuated years (circa 1613 until his death in 1616). Taking aspects we know to be true of Shakespeare’s life – that he had a son, Hamnet, who died at the age of eleven; that he wrote sonnets to a mysterious young boy; that he bequeathed his ‘second-best bed’ to his wife, Anne – Branagh and writer Ben Elton have attempted to draft a compelling fictional denouement to a series of facts that seem more happenstance than portentous or connected. We learn, for example, in the opening titles of the film, that the Globe burned down in 1613 and that Shakespeare does not produce another play, which overstates a link between the cannon shot that ignited a thatched roof and a playwright’s retirement. What the audience is not told is that the Globe was rebuilt a year later and that, as scholar Stephen Greenblatt makes clear in his book Will in the World (2004), Shakespeare had begun to ‘brood about retirement’ as early as 1604.

This is, of course, somewhat expected in a film that leans heavily on imagination for its one hundred minutes of dramatic action, but the problem is it is unlikely to please anybody. Shakespearean scholars ­– indeed, anyone with a passing knowledge of his life and plays – will bristle at the tabloid dramatisation and soapy dialogue, while those seeking a little more heft in their plots will find the humdrum circumstances of Shakespeare’s later years quotidian and dull.

Kenneth Branagh as William Shakespeare in All Is True (Sony)

Shakespeare’s return to Stratford is received rather indifferently by his local community, an incredible notion considering his stature in London at the time. There is a snobbish MP, Sir Thomas Lucy (Alex Macqueen), to contend with at church, as well as a grasping puritan son-in-law who is eyeing Shakespeare’s fortune. But our protagonist has bigger concerns. He remains haunted by the memory of his son, who died seventeen years prior from the bubonic plague, while Shakespeare was in London writing The Merry Wives of Windsor. Shakespeare is convinced that his son was a burgeoning poetic genius, that his pre-teen work showed acres of promise.

While he ruminates on the lost potential of Hamnet and gazes at the middle-distance of the Warwickshire countryside, the women in his life watch on gloomily from the sidelines. A frustrated Anne Hathaway is played wonderfully by Judi Dench, who has that rare on-screen skill of displaying more than one emotion at the same time, in this case both an enduring affection for her husband and frustration at his prolonged absences over the years.

Lydia Wilson as Susanna in All Is True (Sony)

Their two daughters, the unhappily married Susanna (Lydia Wilson) and the petulant Judith (Kathryn Wilder), offer assured performances, although it is Judith, the twenty-eight-year-old spinster and twin of Hamnet, who shines as the frustrated poet hemmed in by Elizabethan mores. Branagh is remarkably restrained in the role of Shakespeare, bringing some much-needed verisimilitude to the role of the Bard. His performance is matched by McKellen’s wonderful Southampton. Indeed, the senior cast members are so adept, so at home wandering through Shakespeare’s England, that some viewers may conclude the film is essentially a late-life employment vehicle for Britain’s ageing thespians.

The cinematography is ambitious and discerning, with wide angles trained on a bucolic England, the lighting so spectacular and artful that the domestic scenes resemble a series of tableaux from a lush Chardin or a Dutch still life. While Ben Elton is undoubtedly a talented writer, the script fails to strike a coherent tone. There are lines so clichéd, so plodding, that one wonders whether we are missing a hidden joke. For example, Shakespeare struggles to keep his garden alive and tells Anne, with po-faced seriousness, that he finds ‘it easier to create things with words’. Elton’s previous foray into Shakespearean drama with BBC’s Upstart Crow was much more successful, allowing him to combine his fine wit with the taut humour and delightful play of Shakespeare’s language. Although Shakespeare knew his Ovid and Cicero, he never lost touch with the trivial pursuits of ordinary people, and, indeed, one would have preferred if Elton had loosened the Elizabethan collar somewhat and had some more fun with this project.

All Is True (Sony), 101 minutes, directed by Kenneth Branagh, is in cinemas May 9.