Henry V.

Swords and Bullets

THERE IS such a thing as revisionist filmmaking: a movie that strains, kicking and screaming, to be different from what it is recycling. The process holds obvious pitfalls, but the Henry the Fifth that Kenneth Branagh has adapted and directed, with himself starred, avoids many of them. It takes great temerity to compete with Laurence Olivier's masterly Henry V, but with the brashness of youth, the arrogance of a rising actor-manager, and the luck of the Irish (Ulster division), Branagh has dived in, swallowed a few mouthfuls of salt water, and kept afloat.

If Olivier started his version with the recreation of the Elizabethan playhouse in which Henry V is being performed, Branagh begins with a film studio in which it is being filmed. This is shaky, because starting with Shakespeare's "wooden O" is to begin appropriately at the beginning; a film studio, however, is more of a destination than a point of departure. Olivier's Chorus was Leslie Banks, a magnificent actor, in period costume, able to lead us seamlessly from the Globe to the realms of ostensible reality. Branagh's Chorus is Derek Jacobi, a very good actor, in modern dress, in which he remains throughout, walking through the film and creating a questionable alienation effect.

But this does clue us in to what Branagh is trying to do: a deconstruction of Olivier's movie, Shakespeare's play, and history itself. Olivier, you see, made his film in 1944, when Britain was in the throes of war and needed moral uplift: a sense that its sufferings had not been in vain. So the film was a glorification, a piece of propaganda (but, then, so is the play), and it was entirely right that a touch of the golden legend should mingle with that touch of Harry in the night. Agincourt was a battle fought in story-book sunlight, sparkling colors, and more panoply than agony.

Branagh, however, made his movie in a time of relative peace, loathing for war, and skepticism about patriotism, however artistically presented. Hence the battles are fought in rain and muck, in ghastly hugger-mugger, with scant heroics, and no glamor whatever. This, of course, is not a novelty; ever since Stendhal's The Red and the Black and Orson Welles's Chimes at Midnight (or Falstaff), specimens of demystification or deglamorization have abounded. But Branagh knows how to deflate with style, how to make cutting down to size as exciting as epic idealization.

Yet, in so doing, he deconstructs not only Olivier and Shakespeare, but also, I repeat, history itself. When the longbows of the English release a singing tapestry into the heavens, they also explain history; when the arming of the French knights becomes the ultimate costume party, the gaudiest horse opera, it happens to tell truthfully why the French lost. When, in this revision, the English arrows wobble forth in hit-or-miss fashion, when confused hacking away creates a chaotic charnel house, we get no sense of strategy, no awareness of who won and why. And then to hear the reckoning of the huge French losses and minimal English ones is to lose faith in the furor that preceded it. If you are going to throw out the baby, at least don't splash us with the bathwater.

Nevertheless, Branagh's film accomplishes a good deal that is both original and believable in the scenes that Shakespeare meant to be depressing but couldn't, even as Olivier wouldn't, show in full detail. There is the death of Falstaff and the conspiracy of Cambridge, the hanging of Bardolph and Henry's carrying the dead Boy across the battlefield in a long sequence without any cutting. So, too, Henry in disguise, mingling with his men on the eve of battle, undergoes a genuine ordeal rather than merely playing a charming royal prank.

The main difference between the Branagh and Olivier versions, however, lies in the protagonists themselves and in the actors playing them. Olivier, even with his funny medieval haircut, was handsome, poetic-looking; like the historic Henry, though not in the same way, Branagh is not. Tow-headed and whey-faced, a bit chubby even, Branagh can show us leadership as a hard-won personal achievement, rather than, as with Olivier, the divine right of kings and movie stars. As Sally Beauman rightly remarked, Olivier "made many savage cuts, and removed from the hero's mind almost every doubt, and from his path almost every obstacle."

So Branagh's version, taken in conjunction with Olivier's--the two should be alternating on the same screen--acts not only as a gratuitous deconstruction but also as a useful corrective. Although William Walton's score for Olivier was better than Pat Doyle's for Branagh, Kenneth MacMillan's cinematography for the latter is, in its antithetical way, as good as Robert Krasker's for the former. And though there were spectacular performances in the Olivier, there are roughly comparable ones in the Branagh. Brian Blessed is a fleshly monument of an Exeter, Judi Dench a pungently gutsy Mistress Quickly, Robert Stephens a wrenching Pistol, Christian Bale a winning Boy, Paul Scofield a nobly careworn French king.

There is fine work, too, from Richard Bryers, Alec McCowen, and a number of others, and, astoundingly, the Mountjoy (French messenger) of Christopher Ravenscroft manages to be as brilliant as Ralph Truman was, maybe even more so. Ian Holm, a good Fluellen, is perhaps goaded into giving an overripe performance, and is made rather too much of--perhaps Branagh is doing his bit to stop Wales from seceding. And there is no way Michael Maloney's Dauphin and Richard Eaton's Constable can equal Max Adrian's and Leo Genn's, respectively.

But it's a bloody good--or good and bloody--showing all the same. Branagh has directed almost as skillfully as Olivier, and his education of a king says a good deal to all of us who have to assume responsibility by learning it the hard way, on the job, in the dirt.

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