In the wistful hills and smoke-shrouded terraces of Port Talbot, there emerged a boy who would become not just Wales’ most resonant voice, but one of world cinema’s most enduring presences. Mr Burton, the much-anticipated biopic from director Marc Evans, now released across Australia, offers a quietly gripping portrait of the formative years of Richard Burton – born Richard Jenkins – and, in so doing, extends a gentle invitation to reflect on the cost and rewards of transformation.

True to the rhythms of Evans’ previous work, this is not a feverish, Hollywood-soaked recitation of career highlights, but a film whose beating heart lies in the dusty parlours and working-class kitchen tables of  Port Talbot in the 1940s. “Ritchie” is played with winsome restraint by Harry Lawtey, who ably morphs from restless adolescent to the first glimmerings of Burton’s thunderous baritone.

But, as the title slyly suggests, it’s not Burton alone at the film’s centre. The titular “Mr Burton” is, initially, Philip Burton (Toby Jones, reliably excellent), the local teacher and frustrated would-be thespian whose mentorship – and eventual adoption – gave the young Jenkins both the tools and the very surname that would become legend.

If the story is elemental – a town, a boy, a teacher, and the weight of expectation – what elevates it above the ranks of the standard biopic is its obsessive attention to texture and atmosphere. Port Talbot is rendered with bruised romanticism: terraced gloom, coal smudge, and the ever-present tension between aspiration and resignation. Behind tidy frames and understated strings (courtesy of John Hardy’s melancholic score), Lawtey’s Richard chafes against both circumstance and heritage. As one unsparing exchange with a brother-in-law reminds us, the climb from coal dust to consummate oratory is neither easy nor wholly laudable: “You sound like you’ve swallowed a grammar book.” “Better than coughing up coal dust,” comes the reply.

The film is most absorbing when it surrenders to the ambiguity of apprenticeship.

The relationship between Richard and Philip draws as much from the currents of need and rivalry as from selflessness. In Toby Jones’ hands, Philip is both exquisitely nurturing and, at moments, faintly possessive – a teacher bound up in living vicariously through his prodigy. Every encouragement comes laced with the recognition of what Philip cannot himself achieve. When Richard muses, “He gave me his name – what else was I meant to give him back?” the ache of legacy, both gift and burden, is laid bare.

But how scrupulously true is Mr Burton to the facts of the actor’s life?

Here, the film walks the familiar, delicate line of all biopics. While it’s rigorously attentive to the broad outlines – the loss of Richard’s mother, the fractious relationship with his miner father, and the profound impact of his mentor – it compresses and romanticises, occasionally sanding down Burton’s flintier edges.

The film is less concerned with tabloid tumult or the volcanic tempests of his future marriages, and more with forging a plausible portrait of the inward struggle: the tension between pride and shame, authenticity and aspiration. In its avoidance of melodrama, it occasionally risks a certain sedateness reminiscent of Sunday-night television – but finds compensation in its emotional accuracy.

For the discerning Starts at 60 audience, Mr Burton has the quiet richness of memory itself, delivered not in grand sweeps, but in the telling detail – a glance, a halting recitation, a longing for difference that never quite heals. It’s less a “greatest hits” package than a gentle study in the making of greatness.

As for Richard Burton’s legacy, there’s no need for myth-making. Seven Oscar nominations. Roles from a roaring Henry VIII to the tortured le Carré spy. A voice that could shake theatre gates or intimate heartbreak in a whisper. Few actors embodied both Shakespearean grandeur and mortal frailty with more style. Yet Mr Burton persuasively insists that the tempestuous adult was shaped, above all, by the miner’s son who “felt like he was acting even when he wasn’t” – haunted by where he came from and the weight of what he became.

This new film, while not immune to sentiment, succeeds in refusing tidy resolution or a final note of triumph. Instead, as Burton himself might have preferred, it leaves an audience with contradiction, heartbreak, and the lingering sound of an unquiet voice: the authentic burden – and splendor – of legacy.

Mr Burton is in cinemas now.