Cinema
Henry V
('PG', Curzon Mayfair)
Mud and guts
Hilary Mantel
So . . . is Kenneth Branagh another Olivier? And do we need another?
Olivier's film of the play was a patriotic exercise. No matter that in 1944 the French were our allies, and that the only mention of the Germans is a slighting reference to their womenfolk, in Act I, scene 1; it was dedicated to 'the Commandos and Air- borne Troops of Great Britain', and de- signed to rouse the national spirit. To serve this design, most of the complexity was knocked out of the play.
There are things to miss, of course, in Branagh's modern version: the rich, clear Book of Hours colours, Olivier's fleeting feline smirk when he receives the Dauphin's insulting tennis balls. There are things not to miss: the gaga French king, the buffoonish clerics, the shots of the laughing audience, who seem to send Henry off to France in the spirit of one of the contestants in Blind Date. Sadly, to the generation familiar with a later Shakespea- rean style — that of Peter Hall, Trevor Nunn, Terry Hands — the Olivier mode seems near-ridiculous. It's no wonder that thousands of schoolchildren swore off the Bard once their exams were passed; Shakespeare must have seemed to them effete and nonsensical and somewhat akin to the Christmas pantomime. Now, we expect actors to efface themselves before their roles and speak the verse as if they understood it, and without roaring at set intervals; we expect the complexity and ambiguity that we know to be inherent in the text.
Kenneth Branagh's soft-voiced Henry cuts his teeth on traitors; genealogies are rehearsed by cowled power politicians, from within a grey-gold fog. Henry is not simply an expansionist: he goes to France to prove himself, and we see it is a necessary proof. He is filled with self- doubt, but proficient in all the pitiless arts of war; when he is called 'dread king', it seems the mot juste.
Kenneth Branagh, who both adapted and directed his version, has misdirected himself in the use of close-ups in the great speeches; his honest-Joe face will not stand the examination, and one finds oneself focusing for diversion on his authentically muddy right ear. The Harfleur speech is drowned out by a lush and intrusive score, but the Saint Crispin's Day speech is just right; he begins it chirpily, progresses to bravado and orchestrates it to its gut- wrenching climax. His battles are fought in mud and rain, as if his scant forces were preparing the terrain for the Great War. When, after Olivier's Agincourt, the French send an emissary to ask if they may bury their dead, there are no more corpses on view that one would expect to find in a public park; Branagh's battlefield is strewn with them, their blood dyeing the puddles scarlet.
The supporting roles are imaginatively cast and executed without flaw. Robbie Coltrane plays Falstaff with prissy diction and unforced pathos. Emma Thompson provides a dignified French Princess rather than a coy and flirtatious one. Brian Blessed is outstanding as Exeter, with his barn-door aspect and his silken, flexible delivery of the verse. There are errors of judgment: the end of the Agincourt scene, with its full choral effects, is distastefully florid. There is the usual problem with the old crowd at the Boar's Head: would Prince Hal, however great his appetite for slumming, have found it rewarding to hang out with this unsavoury crew?
The flaws do not matter much. Nor does the low budget — the fact that Agincourt is fought in a field at Shepperton, that the 'happy few' are so few that the martial addresses resemble team-talks. What Bra- nagh has provided is a lucid and intelligent version of the play which works admirably in cinematic terms. I think it will last better than its predecessor.
. . only rumour has it, you've sold out.'
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