What a difference a decade makes. Kenneth Branagh reached the pinnacle of his directing career in 1996 with his epic four-hour adaptation of Hamlet, in which he headlined a staggeringly talented cast that included Derek Jacobi, Julie Christie, Kate Winslet, Brian Blessed, Rufus Sewell, Charlton Heston, Jack Lemmon, Billy Crystal, and Robin Williams (with the likes of Judi Dench and Gerard Depardieu in cameos). Hamlet was nominated for four Oscars and earned rapturous reviews, but it grossed just over $4.5 million—only a quarter of its $18 million budget.
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Branagh launched his movie career in 1989 with his acclaimed Henry V and returned to the Bard in 1993 with Much Ado About Nothing. Unlike Henry V, which remained faithful to its source material and featured an overwhelmingly British cast, Much Ado had an updated setting (Renaissance Tuscany) and an all-star mix of British and American actors, and its bouncy pacing was deliberately borrowed from the madcap comedies of the 1930s. Its financial success set the pattern for all Branagh’s subsequent Shakespeare adaptations. In Hamlet, set in Denmark near the turn of the 20th century, Branagh’s most obvious influence is David Lean; the panoramic shots of Blenheim Palace and of Fortinbras’s advancing armies recall both Doctor Zhivago and The Bridge on the River Kwai. Love’s Labour’s Lost plays like a time capsule from 1939, laced with songs by Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, and the Gershwins and dance numbers that aspire to the grace of Astaire and Rogers (though they more often bring to mind Ruby Keeler’s earnest hoofing).
The old Duke, a cultivated man enamored of Japan’s fine arts, is usurped by his younger brother, Duke Frederick (both played by Blessed), a brute whose taste in the arts runs to the martial. Duke Senior takes refuge with some loyal retainers in the Forest of Arden, while his daughter, Rosalind (Howard), is held hostage by Duke Frederick so that she might keep his daughter, Celia (Garai), company. When Frederick banishes Rosalind from his home, the cousins don disguises—Celia as the maiden Aliena, Rosalind as the young man Ganymede—and head for Arden to seek Rosalind’s father. There Rosalind encounters her admirer, Orlando (David Oyelowo), who doesn’t recognize her; taking advantage of her guise as a man she devises a scheme by which they will be wed.
Best of all is Kevin Kline, who brings his long experience as both a movie star and a Shakespearean stage actor to bear in his exquisite rendering of Lord Jaques’ soliloquy, “All the world’s a stage.” But Branagh forfeits the scene’s psychological texture by filming it in a circular panning long shot, going in close on Kline only toward the end—what a waste.
Written and directed by Kenneth Branagh, from William Shakespeare’s play
With Brian Blessed, Romola Garai, Bryce Dallas Howard, Kevin Kline, Adrian Lester, Janet McTeer, Alfred Molina, and David Oyelowo
