The Definitive Ways of Watching a Kenneth Branagh Movie
There’s a lot to say about Spielberg, Coppola, Kubrick, Wells and how their films are being explained and analyzed--cementing their skills as legitimate craftsmen of the art of motion pictures. Kenneth Branagh (KB) was once in their midst during the late 1980s to early 1990s but decided to fizzle in and out of tackling classical subjects. Recently, he seems to be back in top shape with projects such as Death of the Nile, A Gentleman in Moscow and Artemis Fowl.
So many audience members (having watched him on stage, film or television) claimed at their dismay of seeing KB’s butchering, hammering and picking on their favorite characters and plots. He never seems to do anything right: his films are either too boring, too strange, too luvvie, too stupid, too beautiful, too shit... the list goes on.
How do you appreciate a Kenneth Branagh movie?
1. Basic: It’s a movie. And with it being that, you judge a movie on your own terms--which are extremely subjective.
There are a million reasons why a movie didn’t work for you. If your reason for not liking a Kenneth Branagh movie is Kenneth Branagh, it just means that you just don’t like KB as an artist, fair enough. Expect that you will be grumpy for the 120-minute duration (or, in the case of his 1996 Hamlet, 240 minutes) or lash out that he directed, produced and starred in it.
2. Be reminded that KB often makes himself the subject of his movies by being part of it.
Specifically, as a director, there is no such thing as ‘the author is dead’ since KB creates his artistic interpretation from a book or a play with him as the omniscient voice, which is why it sounds ‘so into himself’. Notice that logistically he casts people who he is familiar with (either professionally or personally) based on their strengths as projections of their characters in the story. These people often help him create a framework of how he would tell his version of the plot.
I only wished, however, that there were more interviews of him as a director (like the Hamlet documentary) rather than him as a director promoting a film or him as an actor in a movie that he directs. Interestingly enough, the person who gives the most meaningful insight about him as a director was Emma Thompson, his then-wife, who he worked with on the first few films of his career. (Henry V, Dead Again, Peter’s Friends, Much Ado About Nothing) and in various theater productions. I feel like the actors who spoke about him (except those who he frequently worked with) then and even now have a glossy impression of him and doesn’t tell everything about how he directs.
3. Both as a director and as an actor, he brings a sense of himself in his films and one has to be ready for that.
KB has a way of telling stories in images and streams of consciousness that he skips imperative details to let the audience come up with their own conclusion, which frustrates the typical crowd. Unlike some critics who claim that this method of his is done for vanity, I’m inclined to observe that this is just the way he thinks or he transitions from dialogue to stage direction to screen. I can’t directly confirm this technique though since KB rarely discusses his directing methods in detail. Anyway, it is just something to be aware of.
KB is in some ways a traditionalist and in some ways an innovator - a balance that has been shifting to both ends throughout his career. For example, imho Love’s Labor’s Lost would have been better if they loosely adapted it from the play and just made it a straight-up musical as some of the production numbers (No Business Like Show Business, They Can’t Take that Away from Me) were actually good and it worked. I think had this production been released in the 2010s, it would have gotten a bigger cult following.
If you want some Branagh-stamped productions, In the Bleak of Midwinter (1995) and Listening (2003) are the only two of his originals. I honestly believe that had he received better reviews on his works, he might have been more confident tackling this route.
This is not strictly speaking in the realm of film but Wallander (2008) was one of the first Scandinavian-adapted series in British television that he helmed. So innovation? Yes, he ticked the box.
4. Remember that if all fails, seek the women.
Observe that Sir Ken is brilliant at making women look ethereal on screen. You never see a leading lady in a KB movie look like she got out of bed. Eh? Murder on the Orient Express? Impecabbly dressed. Cinderella? Shower them in Swarovski. The stepsisters, in their inappropriateness, still looked fashionable. Thor? He got his goddesses right and you even noticed Kat Dennings. Maggie of Peter’s Friends--who was the geek of the group--still managed to look charming. Ophelia looked fragile and seductive despite her nakedness. And need I mention Dame Thompson? Radiant in possibly every frame? You got it.
This is what appeases me to him. He knows how to put women in a good light, which is far from the sleazy cry of how Hollywood and some British films portray them (I’m looking at you #metoo). For the sheer aesthetic of women, KB deserves a little commendation. Unless there are some raunchy deleted scenes out there that we haven’t seen.
Disclaimer: I do not know Kenneth Branagh or affiliated to anything related to KB. Just an avid enthusiast of his work and probably too tired of hearing the next jab at a project that he has not even done yet.
