Kenneth Branagh: Beyond the Bard

I'm chatting with Branagh in his office on the Paramount lot. It's 6 o'clock on a hot, bronchial, spring after-noon, and he's just trudged over from the sound stage. He seems older than 30, which is what he is now. He doesn't really look older. He seems older. He doesn't show the raw self-involvement you expect from someone just out of his twenties. You can't help knowing from his resume that he's driven and ambitious, but in person there's a calm about him that one associates with someone older. He's come so far, and been so many places, perhaps his maturation process has speeded up.

There is a strong desire in me to be doing something useful," he tells me. "Something that con-tributes to something. Henry V is full of debate about war, and therefore it's a good play to try to do well It's a play full of illumination, and it offers me spiritual comfort. I like to remind people that that's possible. There's a spiritual impoverishment at this end of the century. There are a lot of lost people. Religion is not doing it for them. And neither is art. I think the role of the performing arts, those arts that act on the soul and defy rationality, are important things to be a part of."

Then again, I'm thinking as Branagh continues, maybe he seems older because nobody 1 know under 30--and few over-thinks and speaks in complete paragraphs.

"Today, there is literally a lack of words--of a vocabulary-- for people to explain why they feel depressed or why they feel listless or how they feel about the Gulf War. Good writing, good plays, can fill that void, and I feel a kind of missionary zeal to put that in front of people. Not to say this will necessarily be good, but to say, here, have these things--words, ideas, images--at your disposal...as well as psychiatrists, medicine."

Soon I get Branagh around to the topic of directing. And it's just about at the point where he's saying, "It's shocking to know what, as a director, you can do for an actor--you can make a bad performance good, and a good performance great, and if you're a bastard, you can really fuck 'em up," that I decide to lob him a real humdinger. I ask him if he'd like to make a bad performance a little better right here in the confines of his office. He's not sure what I have in mind until I whip out my copy of Henry V and say, "I want you to direct me."

"Are you serious?"

"Yeah." I figure he's lived with this bloody play for years now. He must have some keen insights. Also, I want to experience for myself the Branagh touch. I want to find out what it is about this guy that's so special.

"Well, if you want to do that, I'm happy to do it." I tell him the speech I'd like to recite, and then I stand up and begin to pace.

"You don't mind if I stop you whenever?"

"No, please."

I launch into my speech in which an angry Henry responds to a skeptic who, just prior to battle, says that if the soldiers going into the fray do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it.

"So," I say, as I gesture, "if a son that is by his father sent about merchandise do sinfully miscarry upon the sea, the imputation of his wickedness, by your rule [and here I punch the word 'your' and point to Branagh], should be impos'd upon his father that sent him; or if a servant under his master's command transporting a sum of money, be assail'd by robbers and die in many irreconcil'd iniquities, you may call the business of the master the author of the servant's damnation."

"All right, all right, okay. I'll stop you there." He's perking up now. The sun is sinking, and he has said he slept little the night before, but now he's on the edge of the sofa. The fatigue seems to have vanished. There's a sparkle in the eyes.

"Lay out that argument more strongly," he says. "If you want to play it that he's very concerned about that, then convince me more by how you do that. 'So,' "he says, reciting the first word of the speech. "Use the punctuation there [referring to the comma]. 'So,' if this happens that way, surely it must lead to such and such. So,'--I have a sense of you building it more, to get to the point about the iniquities--so that...you know...kind of...and...and...and (his ideas seem to be out-stripping his verbal capacity--his hands are flying every which way) let me know what your salient points are. Where you really want...you know... the...the...the...so you have to make a decision about what's important. Do you like the image of the merchandising? I don't think so. But lay it out a bit more. You know what I mean?"

He's running on all cylinders now. I'm feeding off the energy as I'm sure all his actors must. He can hardly string a subject and verb together before he's off to his next thought. I recite the speech again. Branagh isn't sure he's getting his point across so he resorts to visual aides. He puts his sunglasses and his tea cup on the desk. Then he moves the sunglasses.

"So, if I move that there, okay, then it's next to the cup. But if I move it over there, it's much further away. You're saying if it's further away it doesn't mean as much. Rubbish! You know what I mean. So...that...so...use...use the way the gram-mar is structured there to BITE into that argument. To...kind of...CUT in more. Try it again." I get seven words into the speech.

"Yeah,...So,'...start again" I say two words and he cuts me off.

"Assume you're talking to somebody very thick who's really annoyed you. Therefore you're going to be very precise.. .[he reads the line his way]...you know, so you're really using every--single--one--of--those--words." He sits back and waits for me to start again. I get to the word "sinfully."

He says, "Important that...'do sinfully miscarry.' He hasn't done it by accident. He's done it sinfully. So...get this point. He's done this, but he's done it very badly. So he's in trouble. Do you see what I mean?"

"Yes," I say. I'm beginning to see--and feel--what it is about Branagh. There is his passion for the text that inspires you. You suddenly care about breathing life into every word, every COMMA! And there's an energy radiating from him, an energy that keeps you jiving through the tenth take. If he weren't directing, he'd be a great evangelist or haranguer in the House of Commons.

I begin again. "So,"...and here I look up and say to Branagh, "I feel like I want to ad lib, 'What you're saying is...' " He pops up, and in a voice fizzing with excitement says, "But that's exactly what it needs through it. You gotta stop yourself saying that, but you have to put that into it."

I go again. I get up to the bit about the servant.

"Yeah," says Branagh. "You can do even more than that. ... 'Upon his father that sent him.'[sarcastically] Great argument. Oh, terrific. So anybody who does bad things, we'll blame some-one who knows them. YES! You know, so it's sinful and he's wicked, but it should be somebody else's fault. Stress those words which deal with the fuckin' ridiculousness of the argument. Try it once more from the top."

I get to "irreconcil'd iniquities."

'Yeah, exactly. Just give a little parentheses right there." "What do you mean parentheses?"

"Well, it's like...just give it a little space. Irreconcil'd iniquities refers to the fact that there won't have been a chance to have been absolved. You know, so...so what I'm talking about is this underlying seriousness of...you're talking about things and yet let me give you something even more serious...a man who hasn't had confession is caught suddenly,. the moment of that...irreconciled iniquities...is a big deal. I'm talking about a MAN WHO DIDN'T FUCKIN' GET A CHANCE. So the whole conversation is laced with this thing that you'll die...you better be ready when you go out there. Sometimes when you give a note like that it doesn't mean you have to PUNCH IT and say IRRECONCILED INIQUITIES, it's just that you need to let the thought of the weight of that inform how it comes out. Think about that as you go into the next thing. That was going well. The prose in this bit is great. Very sinewy, very tough. It's good fun to practice. It's very chewy. It has a kind of...it has more than just a literal sense, doesn't it? It has a music to it. A texture. An audio texture, if you like."

By this time, I figure my performance has gotten as improved as it's ever going to get from the Branagh touch. He's been pretty gentle with me so far, but it's a good thing I don't have any ego-investment in my acting ability. Branagh himself knows the sting that can set you up for: After auditioning a number of times for the film version of Amadeus, after his agent was told the pan was 90 percent his, and after being kept in limbo for six months, Branagh was turned down when the producers decided they wanted to cast an American. His agent talked him out of sending the following telegram to Amadeus director Milos Forman: "Thanks for the wait STOP Good luck with the film STOP Why don't you stick it up your ass and don't STOP."

I can't help but wonder if Dead Again has any of the "music, the audio texture" of Shakespeare. Can Branagh possibly get as rapturous about it as he did over Henry V?

"Absolutely," he says. That's hard for me to believe. Branagh senses my doubt, and so he lays out his argument, which he's obviously thought about for some time.

"We can't continue to canonize Shakespeare at the expense of living writers. Some people see this as a Branagh sellout. I see it as doing another piece of popular entertainment. And you know, I've always thought of myself as someone whose basic roots and instincts are comedic. I long for the moment when I emerge from the shadow of the serious young man and simply entertain people."

There's a slight pause here as I sip my bubbly water. I'm ready to move on to another question, but Branagh uses the moment to reload and then scatters shot in every direction. He's determined to wipe out my lingering skepticism. "I don't like to make a distinction between comedy and tragedy. There's plenty of comedy in Henry V. The darkest character in Dead Again is also the funniest. "Much Ado About Nothing" is a He Said, She Said for the Elizabethans. And we all know a Malvolio--pompous and vain but entirely understandable, He's a security guard at the studio gate--being officious and yet touching. Those comedies make me cry much more than the tragedies."

Branagh's friends told him he was nuts to take a job in Hollywood. They warned him he'd get eaten alive. "But I told them I had an 800 pound gorilla sitting behind me--Sydney Pollack," says Branagh. Pollack is the director of such movies as Tootsie and Out of Africa, as well as last year's megaton bomb, Havana. Branagh's comment about Havana convinces me that, however brash he might be thought in London, he's plenty diplomatic for Hollywood: "Clearly the wound [from Havana] is very deep, and I felt sorry for him. I told him he's got a right to make the odd film that doesn't work for everyone. He's incapable of making a bad film. He just made one that not many people want to see."

Anyway, Branagh fared pretty well with Pollack behind him. Things did get a little edgy during the casting, though, Branagh says: "The system is so panic-ridden. There can be a very casual dismissive ness of people who I think are marvelous actors."

Turns out Gene Hackman is an example. Branagh wanted to cast him, but some executives felt Hackman had been in too many movies. In the end, Pollack helped Branagh get most of the people he wanted. These included Derek Jacobi and Hanna Schygulla, neither of whose names would thrill a studio head, but for a demonstration of sheer clout, the casting of Obba Babatunde takes the cake. The studio did insist on one American movie actor, and Branagh agreed that Andy Garcia would be a fine addition. It so happens they have the same agent.

I ask Branagh to evaluate himself as a movie director. "It's very up and down," he says. 'There are occasional moments of blistering clarity where I know where to put the camera and what size the shot should be. Then there are moments when I realize how fucking difficult it is."

American audiences will now get the chance to evaluate this imported talent. We'll see if Branagh has the ability to win over a multiplex crowd that likes its story lines linear, its resolutions unambiguous, and its soundtracks raucous. Certainly, audiences will be seeing him for the first time--not even the hoopla that surrounded Henry V could get the vast majority of moviegoers into a cineplex for Shakespeare. But if they Like him once they see him, we could be in for some interesting work in the future.

I mention to Branagh that Jack Nicholson stands to make $50 million from Batman. "You know what I'd do with $50 million?" he asks. "I'd pay for a film myself. I wouldn't get investors. Everybody else could fuck off. I'd do it my way, and I wouldn't have to fuckin' explain or rationalize anything."

_________

Jeffrey Lantos wrote about Cathy Moriarty in our June issue.

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