BE EPIC London Film Festival 5.2.21
"Writer and director Robin Phillips sets off to investigate the true origin of Shakespeare’s plays as well as the true identity of the author. Is the controversy true? Did Shakespeare not write the plays attributed to him? Behind The Name Shakespeare: Power, Lust, Scorn & Scandal, promises to unriddle the mystery.
Robin Phillips’ idea to turn the debate into a documentary feature film announces (by its title) to reveal unknown historical facts to shed light upon the dilemma. This is a welcoming action in a world confronting more and more with debatable truths. There is also an educative under-layer, promising to bring up some interesting historical facts.
...Perhaps Robin Phillips’ Shakespeare: Behind the Name doesn’t aim for anything more than to shed light over the conundrum about Shakespeare’s plays true authorship. But it nevertheless manages to do a lot more: it reveals either the people’s ignorance towards a judgement based on historical evidence or the ‘experts’ ’s self-indulgence with their own truths.
The film also proves that people’s tendencies are to accept everything as granted without much research of the history...Beyond these points, (the film) is also a lesson in argumentation, crystallized in method of logical thinking and deduction rooted in knowledge and proper documentation.
Rarely does one run into such a logical pleading of truth...SHAKESPEARE: Behind the Name is a fantastic ‘detective’ story about ‘Shakespeare’, a magnetic history lesson and first of all a refreshing and revelatory living of truth in one of the greatest cases of ‘oblivion’ in history.
A savorous, detective-worthy investigation of truth, in the greatest case of authorship ‘oblivion’ in history!"
