Why Branagh Keeps Braving the Bard
San Francisco Chronicle, May
14 1993
by Edward Guthmann
Who's afraid of William Shakespeare?
Not Kenneth Branagh: the 32-year-old, Irish-born wunderkind built
his reputation on the Bard, and won double Oscar nominations,
as actor and director, for his film debut in ''Henry V.''
Still, Branagh said yesterday
during a visit to San Francisco, the spirit and the subject matter
of ''Henry V'' are ''profoundly different'' from the buoyant,
optimistic comedy of ''Much Ado About Nothing.'' The latter,
Branagh's fourth feature film in as many years, closed the San
Francisco International Film Festival last night, and opens an
extended run today at the Bridge.
Branagh appeared at the Kabuki
last night, answered questions from an adoring audience, and
later stopped at a South of Market gallery -- dressed in a gray
silk suit -- for the festival's closing-night party. Tonight,
he'll do a similar dance when ''Much Ado'' opens the Seattle
Film Festival. Then he's off to France next week for that monster
of all film festivals -- Cannes.
SHOT IN TUSCANY
Branagh shot ''Much Ado'' last
summer in Tuscany, a region of Italy known for its sunshine,
felicitous landscapes and earthy sensuality. He cast himself
as Benedick, a soldier and smugly confirmed bachelor, and gave
the part of Beatrice, his spicy sparring partner-in-love, to
real-life wife (and recent Oscar winner) Emma Thompson. Denzel
Washington, Michael Keaton and Keanu Reeves are also featured.
As soon as the company had made
camp at their Tuscan villa, and taken full measure of the lush
locale, they knew they were in for a grand time.
''It was impossible to respond
to the circumstances without knowing how special they were,''
Branagh recalled. ''We were close to Florence and Siena and everyone
would be off sight-seeing whenever they had a chance. People
really soaked up the experience in a full-blooded, maybe almost
desperate way.''
There's a film-world maxim --
a superstition, perhaps -- that actors and directors do their
best work under stress and anguish, and usually make dogs when
the company frolics and falls in love with each other.
FESTIVE ATMOSPHERE
Branagh disagrees. ''I think
a happy atmosphere is the best one to work in.'' He said he also
believes the company's bonhomie somehow paralleled the text.
Compared to ''Henry V,'' he said, the tone of ''Much Ado'' is
''realistic, conversational, and seemed to require a performing
style that was as unmannered and unrhetorical as possible. We
wanted something festive and celebratory and holiday-like . .
. almost a joyful hysteria, in which people laugh too much and
lose control of their emotions.''
Already, Branagh's been knocked
in some quarters for his antic, playful performance. Rolling
Stone called him ''a ham in thrall to his plummy vocal dexterity.
His Benedick is strong in flourishes, weak in feeling.''
Did he go over the top? ''Benedick's
a little larger than life,'' Branagh acknowledged. ''His independence
is expressed in extravagant terms, and (at times) all of that
just leaps out of the film.''
To rein himself in, Branagh retained
Hugh Cruttwell, his old drama-school principal, as his on-set
coach. ''He's a great man, scrupulously honest -- my harshest
critic. He helped a lot in gauging the tone (of the performance).
It also helped that I'd played the part for nine months in repertory
-- about four years earlier.''
As for acting and directing simultaneously,
which he's now done four times, Branagh said he can't bear the
former without relief from the latter. ''I can't say I'm ever
truly enjoying directing a film. My brow is furrowed all day
long from answering questions, and remembering the last shot,
and thinking what I have to do next. I find it so demanding,
that the acting side of it is almost my reward for all that hard
work.''
OSCAR WIFE
Branagh smiled with quiet satisfaction
at the mention of his wife's recent best-actress Oscar, given
for her work in ''Howards End.'' He couldn't attend the awards
ceremony in Los Angeles, he explained, because he was playing
Hamlet at Stratford-upon- Avon. But he did watch the show --
telecast live via satellite -- with a group of chums.
''I got pretty tipsy. The show
doesn't start until 2 or 3 a.m., and Emma won hers at about 5:15.
We had the champagne out of the freezer when her name was an
nounced, and were toasting her as she gave her speech. Incredibly,
she managed to call within five or 10 minutes.
''We had a very excited and weepy
conversation, and then a bunch of us had a champagne breakfast.
I finally went to bed about 8:30 that morning. I'd been up all
night.''
NEXT PROJECT
Branagh's next project, set to
roll in late summer, is ''Mary Shelley's Frankenstein,'' yet
another version of the often-filmed classic, this time drawing
more directly from Shelley's 1816 novel. Branagh stars as Dr.
Frankenstein, with Robert De Niro cast as the doctor's creation.
''I'm trying to call him 'the
creature,' not 'the monster.' '' How different will it be from
the Boris Karloff version -- or from Andy Warhol's or Mel Brooks'
for that matter? ''It starts and ends in the Arctic, just like
the book,'' Branagh said. ''The creature is a poet who speaks
very eloquently, who quotes Milton and Coleridge.''
''There's a wonderful fable in
it about parenting and parental responsibility . . . it's a gothic
fairy tale, really.''
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