Henry V movie review & film summary (1989)

One of the wonders of Shakespeare's prose is that, spoken by actors who understand the meaning of the words, it is almost as comprehensible today as when it was first written. In the Olivier film, the actors are better at making the words make sense, perhaps because, for Olivier, clarity of communication ranked above anything else in a performance. Branagh and his actors go for emotion or styles of delivery at the cost of clarity, and so the new "Henry V" is more appropriate for viewers familiar with the play; Olivier's version was literally intended for everyone.

And yet, these observations aside, Branagh has made quite a film here. His Henry V has a spectacular entrance, backlit and framed by huge palace doors, and is a king from beginning to end (the youthful transgressions with Falstaff are firmly behind him). He is not a tall and dashing king - Branagh looks something like Jimmy Cagney - but he is a brave and stubborn one, and Branagh's direction wisely goes for realism in the battle scenes. They are not wars of words, but of swords.

The famous British victory over the French at the battle of Agincourt was Henry's and medieval England's greatest triumph (although Shakespeare could not resist improving on the facts in the scene where Henry is informed of 10,000 French deaths as opposed to only 29 on the English side). In the film, Branagh seems determined to account for every French death, and the battle wears on, steel against steel and horse against man, endlessly. There is too much of it - as if, having spent the money for all of those extras and all of those costumes, he wanted to get his money's worth. And yet, at the end, when the exhausted king confesses, "I know not if the day be ours or no," we share his exhaustion and his despair at bloodshed.

Branagh's approach depends on blood-and-thunder, as opposed to Olivier's insouciance. Even though Olivier made his film in the midst of a world war, it is probably true to say that we live in a more violent time today. Certainly our films are more violent, and in a sense Branagh is only keeping up with the state of the art when he soaks his battles in blood and mud. What happens as a result is that the scenes in court seem to exist on a different level of reality - especially the long scene of flirtation and proposal between Henry and Katherine, which ends the film. We have seen so much real blood that we have no patience for social gamesmanship, and the movie would probably play better if Henry had simply swept Katherine into his arms and forgotten the elaborate phrasemaking.