TIFF ’24: Claes Bang is “William Tell”

By Abe Friedtanzer

The legend of William (or Wilhelm, in German) Tell describes a man who helped to liberate Switzerland from Austrian occupation in the early 1300s. Whether he was real or not is immaterial to the fame his legacy has achieved throughout history, and he’s become the subject of many stories, including the 1804 play William Tell by Friedrich Schiller. That serves as the inspiration for writer-director Nick Hamm’s action epic of the same name, making its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival…

It all begins with the offscreen rape and murder of a Swiss man’s wife by the horrible tax collector, prompting Baumgarten (Sam Keeley) to kill him. The disciples of the king (Sir Ben Kingsley) seek retribution across the land as they hunt for Baumgarten, and, unwilling to turn his back on someone in need, Tell (Claes Bang), a former Knight Templar swayed to compassion when he met his future wife (Golshifteh Farahani) and adopted son Walter (Tobias Jowett), can’t resist helping him. What begins as a necessary alliance for survival turns into an all-out rebellion led by a figure whose expertly-shot arrow does most of the talking.

This film is a sizeable undertaking, featuring numerous establishing overheard shots of castles throughout mountainous areas and the masses of people both causing mayhem and fleeing from it in uncertain times. If nothing else, it’s an ode to the futility of war and senseless violence, where those in power kill with impunity just because they can. Given that this story is set eight hundred years in the past, law and order hardly exist in the same way, but there’s still a through-line to the present where wartime acts can feel all the more purposeless when someone else might soon be in charge who would have spared countless collateral casualties. 

This action film – which it is more than anything, complete with hand-to-hand combat, skilled archery, and bloody battle amputations – boasts a top-tier cast of English and European talent. Bang, so delectably despicable in season one of Bad Sisters, doesn’t imbue Tell with much enthusiasm or showiness, but his abilities speak for themselves. An eyepatch-wearing Kingsley chews scenery as a power operator who understands how the game is played, and both Connor Swindells and Jake Dunn create vicious villains whose downfall should be every viewer’s wish. Farahani and Amar Chadha-Patel, as a forward-thinking priest, kick ass in action scenes, and the standout of the cast is Ellie Bamber as the king’s niece who doesn’t share his distaste for the lower classes and is most certainly going to do something about it. 

The production values are high in this Middle Ages epic, which imagines that epoch in the best way possible, with occasionally antique dialogue alternating with more modern turns of phrase. But the talking isn’t why people should come to see this movie, which somewhat inexplicably ends with a rallying call for more rather than wrapping its story up or providing an on-screen description of what happened next in this period of history. If Braveheart can get a sequel (the relatively under-the-radar Robert the Bruce), why can’t this decently engaging epic? B

William Tell makes its world premiere in the Gala Presentations section at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival and was just acquired for select European distribution by Altitude (UK & Ireland) and SquareOne Entertainment (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland) for early next year.