Sherry Chandler

As You Like It

We’ve had a Japanese twist to our movies lately, having watched Letters From Iwo Jima and Kenneth Branagh’s version of As You Like It in one week.

Branagh’s take on the play — at least he doesn’t call “William Shakespeare’s As You Like It,” a sure indication that much liberty has been taken with the original — sets it in Victorian Japan. Unfortunately for me, about all that offered was a chance to see what a great Darth Vader Brian Blessed would have made. Blessed is cast as both the good duke (Senior) and the bad duke (Frederick). The former he plays with avuncular smarm and the latter with dark gusto. But the Japanese armor has to bring the Star Wars figure to mind. But again, I’m convinced George Lucas stole Darth Vader’s look for Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood.

Though 19th Century Japan may seem counter-intuitive for a Shakespeare play, as hubby points out, none of it matters once Willie has maneuvered his characters into the Forst of Arden, for there is neverland. In neverland, it is fun to watch Blessed, of course, and Kevin Kline, who is probably the United States’s best Shakespearean actor. The NYTimes says

…[Mr. Kiline] seems unable ever to hit a false note. As a thoroughgoing depressive here, he brings some clairvoyance to melancholy, which suits him.

Mr. Kline has, without fanfare, become a kind of elder statesman of American acting, with no taint on him. His face is so kindly and his voice so unforced that viewers can’t help wanting the satisfaction of seeing him cover the big hits…

He is also wonderfully graceful and he gets to use some of his dancer’s moves in this role.

Otherwise, if you want the genius of Branagh’s Shakespeare adaptations, I’d recommend his Hamlet . Here’s Andrea Gronvall in The Chicago Reader:

Although it’s far from the worst thing I’ve ever watched on the small screen, this As You Like It is notable chiefly for Branagh’s puzzling creative decisions. While his fin de siecle Hamlet used the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Europe’s slide into world war as the backdrop for the protagonist’s existential dilemma, As You Like It employs its period and locale only as window dressing. The movie opens with a Kabuki performance (by one of the film’s few Japanese actors, Takuya Shimada) that’s disrupted by Duke Frederick’s takeover of his brother’s estate. Interiors follow the lines of traditional Japanese architecture, but nothing is made of how rooms influence the lives of those within them. (Contrast that with the many mirrored doors and hidden passageways in Hamlet, where the production design fits the court intrigue like an expensive glove.)

Try also Branagh’s Henry V. Even his Much Ado About Nothing, which at least offers Emma Thompson.

Maybe what’s missing in all of this is Branagh himself in a major role?

Possibly related posts:

As You Like It

Kevin Kline’s Hamlet

Dangerous poetry

Darth Vader: Evil in a Crunchy Candy Shell

Hamlet

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