Tag: Emma Thompson

Much Ado About Nothing (1993)

Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson triumph in this brilliant adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing

Director: Kenneth Branagh

Cast: Kenneth Branagh (Benedick), Emma Thompson (Beatrice), Denzel Washington (Don Pedro), Michael Keaton (Dogberry), Keanu Reeves (Don John), Richard Briers (Leonato), Robert Sean Leonard (Claudio), Kate Beckinsale (Hero), Gerard Horan (Borachio), Imelda Staunton (Margaret), Brian Blessed (Antonio), Ben Elton (Verges), Jimmy Yuill (Friar Francis), Richard Clifford (Conrade), Phyllida Law (Ursula)

Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing was his second Shakespearean directing gig, but his fourth film – and it’s clear from the first frame what a confident director he has become. Much Ado is one of the best Shakespeare films ever made, and certainly the greatest film version of a Shakespearean comedy, largely because it’s not only charming and hugely enjoyable but also actually funny – a pretty rare feat for any filmed version of a Shakespeare comedy.

From the opening you pretty much know you are in safe hands. Branagh loves the vibrant excitement of cinema, and delights in bringing the meaning out of Shakespeare’s text. Both ideas are central to the opening of the film, with Emma Thompson’s luscious reading of “Sigh No More”, while the camera pans across a bucolically blissful Tuscan setting. This feeds straight into Beatrice’s playful banter with the messenger – and Richard Briers gives the first indication of the film’s attention to small character details with his “don’t go there” look when the messenger tries to correct Beatrice’s teasing defamation of Benedick. From there the film explodes into a triumphant Magnificent Seven style arrival of Pedro’s lords on athletic horseback (backed by Patrick Doyle’s inspiring overture), while Leonato’s household excitedly (in a typical Branagh tracking shot) prepare to greet them, before an overhead crane shot introduces the two groups meeting in a courtyard. Everything you need to know about the sort of film you are getting – and Branagh’s ability to marry the language of cinema with the language of Shakespeare – is right there.

Branagh’s setting of the play in a golden Tuscan villa is perfect for both its playful, relaxed, soldiers-back-from-the-war plot line and the heated romances and jealousies that fuel the plot. Is it any surprise feelings are running high in such a sultry and hot climate? The two worlds – the army men and the people of Leonato’s household – are immediately clear. And the setting communicates the film’s mood – fundamentally bright, sunny, cheerful. Kick back your heels, you are being taken on a high-spirited, exotic holiday.

In this playful setting, Branagh invariably gets the tone just right. Shakespearean comedy is so reliant on live audience reactions, on bouncing off the audience, that creating this on film without that live element is really difficult. Trust me, watch any number of BBC Shakespeare comedies (don’t worry I’ve done it for you) and you will see immediately how hard it is to get that bounce and comedic juice out of these shows. Branagh gets it spot on here – the characters are so likeable, the delivery of the actors so assured, the spirit of the film so light yet perfectly controlled, that the comedy lands nearly every time. Above all, the actors look like they had a whale of a time making the film – and that enjoyment completely communicates to the audience.

The gulling scenes of both Beatrice and Benedick are expertly played and hugely entertaining: Branagh skilfully cuts them to fast-paced essentials, and then gets the best possible comic mileage out of them – from skilled cut-away shots for reactions to wonderful ensemble playing (Briers in particular is superb as a Leonato slightly out of his depth in trickery). It’s easy for the Beatrice gulling scene to fall a little short after the Benedick one – but, largely thanks to Emma Thompson’s excellent performance, that certainly doesn’t happen here.

But Branagh understands Much Ado is not just a comedy: it comes perilously close to being a tragedy. For at least an act of the play, our heroes are at loggerheads, and murder and death are almost the end results. From Claudio’s explosively violent reaction to Hero’s perceived betrayal at the wedding to Leonato’s furious denunciation, horror and danger are ever-present. This then leads us into Beatrice and Benedick’s wonderful post-wedding. Branagh sets this in a small chapel – adding an echo of marriage vows to the understanding the pair reach – and Thompson’s passion, fury and pain are met (for the first time) with quiet, mature understanding from Branagh’s Benedick. Thompson’s order for Benedick to “kill Claudio” carries a fiery conviction that chills. It’s a brilliant scene.

A lot of this works so well because of the brilliance of the acting. Branagh is charming, very funny and mixes this with a growing emotional depth and maturity as Benedick. But the film belongs to Emma Thompson who is quite simply astounding as Beatrice – surely one of the greatest performances of the role you will catch. She is the soul of the movie, at turns playful, frustrated, joyous and consumed with grief and rage. She speaks the lines (needless to say) with absolute clarity and emotion, but even more than that her intelligence dominates the movie. You can’t take your eyes off her.

But this is a very strong cast of actors, the best mix Branagh got between Hollywood stars and his regular players. Denzel Washington is simply perfect as the noble but strangely distant Pedro (his moments of isolation at the close of the film are as touching as they are unsurprising). Richard Briers gives some of his best work in a Branagh film as a Leonato, moved to great emotion and feeling. Leonard and Beckinsale are perhaps not given huge amounts of interpretative depth, but are very lovable. Gerard Horan is very good as a swaggering Borachio.

It’s easy to knock Keanu Reeves but – aside from his untrained voice, which makes him sound duller and flatter than he actually is – his Don John is actually pretty good. As a physically very graceful actor he completely looks the part, and he glowers and fumes with all the intensity you could require – and after all, Shakespeare didn’t give Don John much more to do than that.

No the real problems with the production – and the parts that don’t work – are Dogberry and Verges. Now I can see what Branagh is trying to do here: the malapropisms of Dogberry’s dialogue are rarely, let’s be honest, that funny, and would work even less well on film. But the decision to make Dogberry and Verges a cross between Monty Python and the Three Stooges doesn’t really work. Michael Keaton is giving it his all here to try and get some humour out of this – but his straining for every laugh, combined with gurning over delivery, bizarre accent and physical over-complications, just deaden every single Dogberry scene. These scenes largely flop.

But it doesn’t matter when every other scene in the film works so damn well. And, however much you might drift away during the Dogberry moments, the rest of the film will capture your heart and mind every time. Filmed with a luscious richness and stylish confidence, this is a ravishing and flamboyant film that will never fail to entertain. By the time the final reconciliation has happened, and the house erupts into a joyous celebration party – filmed, with astonishing chutzpah, as a single take, staggering in its complexity, that covers close-up, tracking shot and huge crane shot – while Patrick Doyle’s score gives a swelling version of Sigh No More, you’ll be in love yourself. And if not – well look to yourself.

Beauty and the Beast (2017)


Dan Stevens and Emma Watson faithfully recreate almost shot-by-shot a much better cartoon

Director: Bill Condon

Cast: Emma Watson (Belle), Dan Stevens (The Beast), Luke Evans (Gaston), Kevin Kline (Maurice), Josh Gad (LeFou), Ewan McGregor (Lumiere), Stanley Tucci (Maestro Cadenza), Ian McKellen (Cogsworth), Audra McDonald (Madame de Garderobe), Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Plumette), Hattie Morahan (Agathe)

hhBeauty and the Beast was released at the perfect time. The generation who grew up watching the original could now take their children – or revisit the fond memories with their parents. It was a chance for everyone to wallow in sentimental nostalgia. Disney knew its market would be people who wanted something as close as possible to what they remembered: they certainly delivered.

Surely you know the story by now? But in case you’ve been living under a rock for your entire life: Belle (Emma Watson) is the beautiful but bookish village girl who dreams of a something more than this provincial life. When her father Maurice (Kevin Kline) is imprisoned by a horrific Beast, Belle volunteers to take his place and stays in the castle. The Beast and all his servants are enchanted and only true love can break the spell – will Belle and the Beast fall in love?

I would ask why Disney feels the need to make what are effectively shot-by-shot remakes of their animated classics, but the fact this raked in almost a billion dollars at the box office kinda answers that question. But make no mistake, creatively this is karaoke: a few small flourishes have been thrown in, but effectively it’s a faithful recreation of a film that was already pretty much perfect to begin with. In fact, watching it, the only real emotion I felt was a desire to watch the “real” thing again. Damningly, twice my wife and I stopped to look up the equivalent scenes from the original on YouTube: in every case they were better.

That’s the big problem. Of all these remakes, only The Jungle Book was a genuine reimagining of the original. This one follows Cinderella and hews as close as possible to the film you’ve already seen. The plot is identical. The song and dance sequences are the same. The characterisations are the same. Hell, half the line readings are the same. It’s a film that is so dependent on people’s affection for the original that it’s terrified of offering anything too different from it. In which case – why not just watch the original? Would you rather look at a poster or the actual Mona Lisa?

Condon has thrown in some new pieces here and there to get an extra 30 minutes of action. One decent invention does involve the spell also causing the villagers to forget the castle exists, which is neat. The others add less. Belle has been turned into as much of an inventor as her father and, in one particularly bizarre sequence, invents the washing machine. There is a rather confused sequence involving a magic book which allows the Beast to go anywhere in the world (the witch clearly left a plethora of magic devices behind to entertain the Beast) – raising the question of why he needs that enchanted mirror, since he can apparently physically travel through both space and time with his Tardis-book. LeFou is subtly reimagined as gay – but this is very quietly done so as not to damage the film’s box-office potential in some markets.

There is a rather clumsily done storyline around Belle’s mother dying of plague when she was a baby, which also adds nothing. The film may possibly be trying to construct some kind of clunky commonality between the Beast and Belle with their parental traumas, but a dead mother with a rose fetish shares little with the stereotypical Cold Abusive Aristocrat father the Beast has – and anyway, they’re already giving them plenty of common ground through the good stuff they’ve lifted straight from the original film. Nothing else new really stands out.

In fact, the film is so studiously faithful, you get annoyed when it deviates from the original – particularly as it invariably does scenes less well. The final battle between Gaston and the Beast suffers horribly, with the emotional narrative of the fight thoroughly muddled, in contrast with the original’s clear and efficient storytelling. In the original, the Beast despairs and refuses to save himself from Gaston’s attack until he sees Belle. Here, he’s sort of defending himself and sort of not, and Belle is given some action nonsense, and Gaston’s death is turned from a clean narrative (one treacherous thrust hits home, then in sadistically going for the second he falls to his death) into a strange sequence where he stands and brutally shoots at the Beast repeatedly until the stonework beneath him randomly collapses and send him plummeting to his doom.

None of this, however, compares to the butchering of the moment when Belle discovers the library. In the original this is an endearingly sweet moment, with the Beast overcome with excitement at giving Belle a gift she really wants. The audience shares in his delight, and is charmed by his touching anxiety that she will like it, just as they share in her wonder at the discovery. It’s a major moment in the growth of their relationship. Here it’s thrown away – the Beast shows her the library in a fit of irritation at her pedestrian Shakespeare tastes. The film gives all the time and emotional weight to the tedious “magic book” sequence, where they travel to the “Paris of my childhood” and discover that, yup, Belle’s mum died of plague. Well that was both depressing and uninteresting…

Anyway – take a look at those two library scenes…

The acting is pretty good. Emma Watson does a decent job, particularly considering the pressure on her. She performs the songs prettily, although they don’t soar the way they did when performed by someone with the vocal power of Paige O’Hara. Her Belle is thoughtful but has a level of defiance and independence that’s been stepped up from the original. Dan Steven’s Beast is much more of a prince under a ghastly shell – unlike the original he’s literate, can dance and is well spoken (which makes his moments of animalism and his soup eating failure stick out all the more). The rest of the cast are fine – Ewan McGregor is as flamboyant as you’d expect, Emma Thompson sings the song very well, Kevin Kline makes a lot of Maurice. However for each of them, there are moments when you remember fondly that the animators invested the originals with more emotion.

The one member of the cast who does stand out is Luke Evans. How is the guy not a star yet? Sure the swaggering braggart Gaston might be the best part in the whole film, but Evans nails it with all the energy and egotism you would expect. His scenes are the best in the film by far, and he’s the only one who manages to do something a little different with his role.

Of course it looks fabulous, but it feels somehow a little bit empty. All the things that move you are done (mostly better) in the original – in fact, a major part of why they move you is the memory of the original. The acting is pretty good and it’s well filmed and made – the design is terrific. But honestly, with the original out there what’s the point? Why would you watch this rather than the other one? It’s not as moving, it’s not as exciting, it’s not as funny, it’s not as charming. All it does is to try and recreate the original as closely as possible. You can stage Hamlet thousands of times and each production would be different, but Disney can’t stage Beauty and the Beast twice without replicating it.

If you want it to exactly match your memories, without being quite as good, it’s the film for you. If you want a Disney live-action film that feels like something original, watch The Jungle Book.

Howards End (1992)


Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins discover marriage is never an easy business

Director: James Ivory

Cast: Helena Bonham Carter (Helen Schlegel), Anthony Hopkins (Henry Wilcox), Vanessa Redgrave (Ruth Wilcox), Emma Thompson (Margaret Schlegel), James Wilby (Charles Wilcox), Samuel West (Leonard Bast), Nicolas Duffett (Jacky Bast), Jemma Redgrave (Evie Wilcox), Susie Lindeman (Dolly Wilcox), Prunella Scales (Aunt Juley), Joseph Bennett (Paul Wilcox), Adrian Ross Magenty (Tibby Schlegel)

From the mid-1980s to the late-1990s, Merchant-Ivory was the by-word for a certain type of film-making: intelligent and sensitive adaptations of books, with fine British actors in wonderful costumes. It was a perfect brand. And it probably reached its peak with this masterful adaptation of EM Foster’s precise, tragi-comic analysis of class in Britain.

Set in Edwardian England, the film focuses on three very different families: the Wilcoxes, grown wealthy off the back of the Empire, who have purchased large chunks of the houses and lands of the former aristocratic elite; the Schlegels, an upper middle-class family of intellectuals; and the Basts, a lower middle class couple trying to improve their lot. Ruth Wilcox (Vanessa Redgrave) befriends Margaret Schlegel (Emma Thompson) in the last few months of her life and, on impulse, leaves Howards End, her beloved family home, to Margaret when she passes away. With the agreement of his children, her husband Henry (Anthony Hopkins) destroys the note, but later falls in love with and marries Margaret. Meanwhile, Margaret’s sister Helen (Helena Bonham Carter) struggles to help improve the lot of thoughtful, well-read insurance clerk Leonard Bast (Samuel West) – with disastrous results.

The film balances these varying plot lines with great skill. It weaves in both well-judged social commentary and a shrewd and subtle analysis of the way perceptions of morality (and the consequences of people’s actions) alter dramatically depending on the class and sex of the person perpetuating the societal offence. Helped by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s masterful (and Oscar winning) screenplay, Ivory’s direction balances this acute scrutiny with an emotional and deeply involving story, staffed with characters whose dignities and flaws are humanly observed. Ivory and Jhabvala demonstrate a masterful understanding of the way we build stories about our own lives and create the people we want ourselves to be – and how this can be influenced by the results of our actions.

These self-images people create of themselves in the film are invariably more noble than the people they transpire to be. Of all the characters, arguably only Leonard Bast follows up on his intentions and consistently delivers on his word. It’s a tribute to Samuel West’s wonderful performance as Bast, as well as the film’s control, that Bast is both a tragic victim and also at times an almost painfully pathetic character, a striver whose every attempt to improve his lot ends in disaster (the film also sticks to Forster’s darkly comic fate for Bast).

While the Basts constantly pay a heavy price for every action, the Wilcoxes and Schlegels largely avoid paying any price for their mistakes until the end. Indeed, Henry Wilcox seems barely able to understand that his past love affair with a young woman left him with a certain moral responsibility for her fate after he broke the affair off. In a brilliant series of short scenes (with fades to black between each section of the conversation) we see him painfully confess the story to Margaret; the fades perfectly capture the mood of a broken up and difficult emotional moment for both characters.

The film perfectly understands the hypocrisy of the upper classes. Wilcox is a man of complete certainty and off-hand confidence, making sweeping statements with complete authority, who has no empathy with the lower classes: “The poor are poor. One is sorry for them, but there it is”, he blithely tells the Schlegels. His son Charles (a smackable James Wilby) is a spoilt and selfish snob with only contempt for anyone lower than him on the social ladder. Helen’s later fall from grace (in its way a manipulation of those dependent on her) is met with a condemnation Wilcox never imagines should never attach to his own actions. The whole film is a brilliant tapestry of these contrasts and flaws.

Emma Thompson won an Oscar for her work here, and she does a wonderful job as the emotional heart and conscience of the film, essentially our eyes into the events of the story. Intelligent and with a deep sense of morality, Margaret is also a woman who is willing to make compromises when she judges there is the need. Her decisions are not always correct or justifiable, but Thompson makes her struggle between her need to do the right thing and her desire to find happiness with her husband constantly understandable. In addition to this, Thompson is a radiant and engaging presence, allowing a character verging at times on being a matronly fusspot to always be someone we care deeply about.

She’s matched by a complex and thoughtful performance by Hopkins as Henry Wilcox. Hopkins has a brilliant understanding of the essential moral emptiness of Henry, based not on any malice or cruelty but on a genuine belief that some rules can be applied differently to him because his position and his own self-image reassure him that he is a good man. One of the film’s main subplots is the journey of Henry to understanding his actions have had consequences – and that these consequences reflect on him. Hopkins handles the growing awareness of this with brilliant sensitivity – his late emotional collapse is a masterclass in low-key, elegant, but deeply moving, acting. It’s also a tribute to the film’s mastery that Wilcox (despite basically being a cold, thoughtless snob) remains a character we relate to, understand and forgive.

Sex bubbles under in this Edwardian world. Henry’s sexual history is a crucial turning point. Helen’s freer attitude to love first brings the Wilcoxes and Schlegels together and then later leads to disastrous consequences with Bast. Tied directly in with the class issues in the film, Charles (James Wilby) is determined later to defend her honour, despite Helen having no wish for him to do so. There is even a hint of sexual feeling in Ruth Wilcox’s sudden friendship with Margaret. Alongside this run themes of the slow and deliberate way relationships develop: Margaret and Henry’s relationship takes the whole course of the film to reach a proper understanding, while Helen (and Helena Bonham Carter is wonderful here as a faintly skittish well meaning do-gooder) and Bast’s friendship shifts and changes throughout the course of the film without either really understanding the other.

Howards End’s complexity is of course in large part due to EM Forster’s original source novel, and his insight as a commentator on Edwardian England and its morals. But to capture so much of the air of the novel in this film, and to bring the story so richly to life, is an enormous tribute to the mastery of Ivory and Jhabvala’s work here and to the excellent work of the cast. The production values are exceptional of course and the film is told with pace, zip and feeling. If there was a high point for the costume drama this (and their follow up picture, The Remains of the Day) was it. Merchant-Ivory would never hit these heights again.

An Education (2009)


First love: Never as smooth as you think it will be

Director: Lone Scherfig

Cast: Carey Mulligan (Jenny Mellor), Peter Sarsgaard (David Goldman), Dominic Cooper (Danny), Rosamund Pike (Helen), Alfred Molina (Jack Mellor), Cara Seymour (Marjorie Mellor), Emma Thompson (Miss Walters), Olivia Williams (Miss Stubbs), Sally Hawkins (Sarah), Ellie Kendrick (Tina)

The education in question is the first sexual relationship of a girl who is 16 going on 17. Jenny (Carey Mulligan) is a schoolgirl and prospective Oxford candidate who finds herself winning the attention of charming older man David (Peter Sarsgaard). Jenny is swept off her feet by the world of classy bars, art and culture David introduces her to and begins to lose interest in her literal education: if all education can do is turn women into either lawyers’ wives or teachers what is the point?

Strangely for a film based on a man approaching middle-age taking advantage of a naïve and excited teenager, it’s strangely cosy and charming, with the whiff of “safe” family viewing. Nothing wrong with that of course, but the whole confection is just a little too slight, a little too well packaged, a little too carefully and thoughtfully put together to really leave a lasting impression. Instead it’s an enjoyable enough 90 minutes which doesn’t really have anything that stays with you.

What it does have going for it above all is the marvellous lead performance from Carey Mulligan. At the time best known for appearing in the Blink episode of Doctor Who, Mulligan cements her early promise by demonstrating what a charismatic and vibrant performer she is. Jenny delights in the ease with which David deceives everyone without it ever occurring to her that he might be lying to her, and this teenage arrogance could easily be smackably annoying – but Mulligan makes her deeply engaging and loveable. You want to protect her from making an irrevocable decision that will ruin her life at 16 (sort of the opposite to Bella in Twilight). But Mulligan’s endearingly engaging performance sweeps the audience up into Jenny’s fascination with the exciting life David seems to be offering, and makes you understand why she believes it to be a viable option. She’s a radiant centre to the film and it’s almost impossible to imagine it working at all without her.

It is in fact very well-acted throughout. Sarsgaard underplays the role, suggesting the underlying shallowness and weakness to David which is far clearer to the audience than the characters. The supporting cast are knock-outs: Rosamund Pike is hilarious as a sweet airhead, Alfred Molina embodies the gullibility of the striving middle-classes mixed with great reserves of unspoken love and affection, Olivia Williams is terrific in an underwritten part as Jenny’s concerned teacher.

It’s strange watching the film to see how it romanticizes the sort of behaviour that, if we encountered it today, would be denounced as grooming at best, paedophilia at worst. In fact, the film soft-peddles a lot of the unpleasantness of its characters: David and Danny, it is clear, are conmen and swindlers, though I suspect the film wants us to think of them more as charming rogues. I suppose it’s the impact of seeing the story from Jenny’s perspective, but some more outside commentary would perhaps have been interesting: it also might have been more interesting to see Jenny actually having to deal with the moral consequences of some of the actions that happen around her. 

This is a slight affair, almost a shaggy dog story. There are many more things it could have explored (the swindling career of David, the role of women in the 1960s, the changing perceptions of “blue stockings” and their career options) but instead it settles for being a charming period piece. It makes no secret of the fact that, deep down, we are not meant to trust David and nothing in the plot ever really surprises you. It’s a gentle amble through an ill-advised teenage romance. But, despite all that, it’s very well acted and Carey Mulligan proves she was set to become a star.