Kenneth Branagh and The Art of the Adaptation: or, What You Will

Starting with 1989's Henry V.

Last year, I kicked off our Paid Subscriber-only pieces (which, by the way, have moved to Fridays!) with a class-of-sorts, analyzing the best and worst film adaptations of Broadway musicals. It was largely an academic exercise, starting with a syllabus and ending with a final paper, which sandwiched research and references among my own criticism. I believe it to be among the best things I've written - it also kicked my ass week after week.

So I thought I would do it again. Not musicals, of course, but if I can write about the art of the adaptation and if folks like you like to read it, I thought it would be worth another go. I also decided we won't treat it like a class this time. I'll keep up the research end of the bargain, but you won't have any homework - I don't like homework, I don't even give it to my middle school students.

Choosing the subject was easy: Kenneth Branagh. The actor, filmmaker, producer, Shakespearean, and all-around goofball (we'll get into that, trust me) has made a career of making movies based on everything from classic plays and novels to comic books and contemporary literature. In this new series, which I'm dubbing The Art of the Adaptation, we'll cover film adaptations of Shakespeare, Shelley, Christie, Stan Lee, and Walt Disney, among a number of other plays and novels. This is what Branagh does and this is what I do, so it's about time I met my match.

Branagh kicks off his film career with the most obvious of choices for this young theatre actor: King Henry V. (Well, the obvious choice would probably be Hamlet, but we'll talk in a few weeks about why that wouldn't be possible, yet.) Just a few years earlier, he exploded onto the scene, fresh out of drama school, playing the title role in Henry V for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Under the direction of Adrian Noble, Ken earned rave critical reviews, like the one from Mel Gussow, who wrote in the New York Times, "Mr. Branagh is well outfitted to carry the kingly standard, whether it is spreading a little Harry in the night, thundering on the battlefield or wooing the discreet Princess of France."

Shackled with the hype and expectations of a boy genius, Branagh similarly burst onto the film scene with his Henry V, which earned him Academy Award nominations for both acting and directing - all before the age of 30. It also, perhaps more importantly, earned him a Shakespearean blank check, which he would cash again and again in the years to come - and one that we'll cover in the weeks to come.

But, with decades of distance, how does Ken Branagh's Henry V compare to Shakespeare's original play?