MR BURTON

THREE AND A HALF STARS Thanks largely to PH Burton, Richard Jenkins would become one of the 20th century's most celebrated actors.

PERIOD DRAMA UK English #MRBURTON Starring Toby Jones, Harry Lawtey

Richard Burton’s career is as well documented as his marriages but less well known is the boy behind the man behind the legend. Marc Evans’ MR BURTON takes us back to the beginning, to Port Talbot in the 1940s, when the Welsh miner’s son was still Richard Jenkins. This is no straightforward biopic but an absorbing, heartfelt chronicle of mentorship, identity, and the unlikely alchemy that forged one of the 20th century’s great actors.

At its heart lies the relationship between Richard and his schoolteacher, Philip Burton (Toby Jones, as tender and quietly commanding as ever). Spotting raw talent in a boy who would rather be on the rugby pitch, Mr Burton channels his own frustrated theatrical dreams into coaching Jenkins. What begins as a stern education in Shakespeare blossoms into a profound and complicated friendship. He even makes the young man his legal ward and gives him his name; a gesture as generous as it is loaded with implication.

Harry Lawtey does a commendable job transforming the focussed teenager into the focussed alcoholic Burton would become. He reshapes a breathless recitation of HENRY V’s prologue and in doing so, makes us believe in the birth of a legend. Lawtey never loses sight of the needy, fatherless boy who glowers at life’s unfair hand. Craving validation, bruised humanity is his calling card.

MR BURTON is not a sanitised tale. The film nods to darker undercurrents - whispers about Mr Burton’s intentions, a father’s sneering homophobia, and the disputed story that guardianship was bought for £50. A late bedroom scene between teacher and pupil in pyjamas is excruciating in its ambiguity, but Evans is careful to suggest dignity rather than scandal. Jones embodies a man haunted by loneliness, Lawtey a boy torn between gratitude, resentment, and ambition.

The narrative crescendos with Richard’s breakthrough as Prince Hal in HENRY IV at Stratford, Mr Burton watching proudly from the audience, a scene with echoes of the very betrayal Shakespeare wrote about. In moments like these, MR BURTON shows itself not just as an origin story but as a study in pride, shame, and the fragile foundations of greatness.

Around them, Evans and his screenwriters Tom Bullough and Josh Hyams build a world of struggle with robust support from Richard’s sister and weary brother-in-law, and Lesley Manville’s kindly landlady ‘Ma’ who brings a note of warm propriety to the household. If there’s an, ahem, dud note it’s John Hardy’s glistening score which undercuts almost everything with its intrusive earnestness.

Evans’ film may be slightly naïve at times, its admiration for Burton occasionally smoothing over complexity, but it remains a richly enjoyable, vigorously acted drama. Not simply a celebration, MR BURTON is a reminder that the brightest lights are often struck in the darkest shadows.

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