Once More, Into the Breach

Kenneth Branagh bears down on you with a jaunty stride, grinning mischievously. “So,” he says, arms outstretched to encompass his surroundings, “do you like my house?” You look around and you tell him you do; his “house,” as he jocularly calls it, is impressive indeed.

Let’s start with the living area: a huge state hall with balconies around its periphery, a gantry spanning its entire width, two imposing thrones on a dais and a vast expanse of checkerboard floor. The long walls of this cavernous room are lined with mirrored doors; it feels simultaneously spacious and indefinably threatening. That’s with good reason, for behind these mirrored doors are smaller chambers--studies, bedrooms, salons--where endless plotting and intrigue can go on in secret.

This is the world Branagh, 35, has ordered to be created for the film of Shakespeare’s tragedy “Hamlet,” in which he directs and plays the title role--a world of whispers, conspiracies and secret plots, all within earshot of the court of Denmark itself. If he has a spring in his step this rainy spring day, it may be that he feels the liberty of a man being allowed to make precisely the film of “Hamlet” he wants.

In Branagh’s case, this involves going for broke. He is by no means the first actor to play the prince on the big screen (Laurence Olivier, Nicol Williamson and more recently Mel Gibson all had a stab at the role), but his is the first “Hamlet” film to include every line Shakespeare wrote for it, with no cutting of subplots, brief scenes or minor characters. He cheerfully predicts it will last 3 1/2 hours.

(Since filming, Branagh has apparently had second thoughts about that 210-minute running time. A source close to him said: “He won’t commit himself to a running time. He’s aware that shorter is preferable, but he also wants to do justice to the full text.”)

This represents towering ambition, and though 10 films of Shakespeare’s plays will have been completed in an 18-month period by the end of this year on various locations worldwide, the word, in British theatrical and film circles at least, is that Branagh’s “Hamlet” may be the one to beat. (Two Bard films have opened so far--the warmly praised “Richard III,” with Ian McKellen, and “Othello,” with Laurence Fishburne in the title role and Branagh as Iago, which had a lukewarm reception.)

It might seem that Branagh is trying to have it all ways merely by making a full-length “Hamlet” with sumptuous production values on a modest budget of $18 million--the amount he agreed to with the American company Castle Rock Entertainment. But he has added yet another ingredient into this rich mix by commandeering an astonishing, stellar cast, composed of sterling British theater actors in the main parts and international celebrity names in what often amount to cameo roles.

With Branagh as Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Julie Christie plays his mother, Gertrude; Derek Jacobi is Claudius, whom she marries with undue haste after the death of Hamlet’s father. Oscar nominee Kate Winslet (from “Sense and Sensibility”) is Hamlet’s mistress Ophelia, while longtime Branagh cohort Richard Briers plays her father, the scheming Polonius.

Then come the Hollywood names--Charlton Heston as the Player King, Robin Williams as the courtier Osric, Jack Lemmon as the officer Marcellus and Billy Crystal as the First Gravedigger. Gerard Depardieu also appears as a servant, Reynaldo, and legendary 92-year-old acting knight John Gielgud is Priam in “Hamlet’s” play within a play.

“I just wanted to work with the best actors I could, and with people I liked,” Branagh said. “I’ve been wanting to work with Depardieu for some time, Jack Lemmon’s someone I always admired, and I enjoyed working with Robin on ‘Dead Again’ very much.

“I also wanted these parts played in an original way, with people who weren’t bringing the baggage of having played the role before or seen this play a thousand times.

“There’s lots of my heroes from a period when I first became hooked on films and TV. For example, Heston, whose film of ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ I saw when I was quite young.”

There’s also veteran actor John Mills, star of a slew of British war films in the 1950s, who also influenced him as a young man; he plays the ailing old King of Norway.

If Branagh constantly refers to the past in discussing “Hamlet,” it’s because the play has been an obsession with him for two decades. He remembers as a teenager sitting on the sofa at his home in Belfast, Northern Ireland, as his mother showed him dozens of family photographs: “And out of the corner of my eye, I was watching TV as Richard Chamberlain--Dr. Kildare!--played Hamlet. It really stuck in my mind. And a few years later I saw Derek [Jacobi] play Hamlet. So this has been going on 20 years. It’s a dream come true to be able to do it on film myself.’

This is not idle talk. Branagh has played the prince three times onstage and once on radio, for a BBC production. He wrote and directed the low-budget film “In the Bleak Midwinter,” released in the U.S. as “A Midwinter’s Tale.” It is about a hapless troupe of actors who commandeer a rural church hall to mount a production of, yes, “Hamlet.”

“People have asked me why I’m doing ‘Hamlet,’ and I often say all the answers were contained in ‘In the Bleak Midwinter,’ ” Branagh muses. “Those answers include: I don’t know. I have to. It’s marvelous. It’s ridiculous. It’s meaningful. It’s meaningless. And it’s funny.”

Whatever the reasons, he is submerged in the role. Branagh has bleached his reddish-brown hair blond to play the prince, and is sporting a mustache and an imperial--a pointed beard below his lower lip.

On this particular day he is directing rather than acting, but is dressed in a way that suggests he is prepared to do either--he wears a period vest and blouson, but also sports black jeans and sneakers.

He has opted for a mid-19th century setting for his “Hamlet,” and the clothes and weapons employed reflect the fact. Christie walks slowly up and down the state hall contemplating her lines, dressed in a glamorous cream dress with a tight waist and a bustle; outside, a group of extras waits to burst in, following the vengeful Laertes, Ophelia’s brother (played by Michael Maloney). “Make sure the guys with the guns are the ones in the front line,” Branagh instructs an assistant director.

Why the 19th century? “The play yields contemporary juice,” Branagh says. “This period is close enough to make you think it’s about a real family, yet distant enough for Shakespeare’s language to be acceptable.”

He adds that the play is essentially about warring factions within families--disagreements that affected the lives of millions of people, as nation states rose and fell as a result. “From this domestic tragedy spring events that literally change the borders of Europe,” Branagh says.

With this in mind, production designer Tim Harvey set out to create a world for “Hamlet” that emphasizes a stylish, romantic Danish court. There is a tangible sense of corruption and an excess of sex, food, alcohol, a clear sense of hierarchy and a strong military presence.

For two weeks of location shooting, Harvey dressed Blenheim Palace, near Oxford, one of England’s great stately homes and the ancestral seat of Winston Churchill’s family. At one point he covered the entire grounds around Blenheim in fake snow.

But “Hamlet” mainly consists of interiors shot at the Shepperton studios 20 miles west of London. To stress the grandeur of the court, Harvey decided to join two adjacent sound stages together; the full effect of this will be seen in an eight-minute tracking shot starting in Gertrude’s bedroom and meandering down a long ornate corridor to the resplendent state hall.

Branagh, the director, then, is aiming for a flamboyantly cinematic “Hamlet”; unlike some screen versions of Shakespeare, this will clearly not consist of talking heads in close-up or static figures on a stage.

The proof of this is clear as he perches in front of a monitor behind the mirrored doors and watches the startled Jacobi and Christie run for cover as Laertes’ mob pounds at the state hall doors; on the monitor, one sees the camera inside the hall, swooping, fuming and careening like a pinball. “That’s right,” he says upon the scene’s completion, “we’re going here for something natural, real, passionate--and quick.”

“Quick” has been a key word for Branagh in the last year; “Hamlet” is the third film (along with “Othello” and “A Midwinter’s Tale”) he has completed in that time. By contrast, he spent two years of his life on his previous project, “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.”

“I think he’s been working quickly as a reaction to any problems he might have encountered on ‘Frankenstein,’ ” says Maloney, who played the lead in “A Midwinter’s Tale” and recalls that the time between the initial read-through for that film and its eventual wrap was only three months. “It came and went, and then Ken was on to his second film of the year.”

Branagh acknowledges that 1995 was a bad year for him; he separated from his wife, Emma Thompson, while on the professional front “Frankenstein” was met with hostile reviews and performed poorly at the U.S. box office.

But Maloney, his friend of 14 years, believes “Hamlet” starts a new phase of Branagh’s career: “This film really closes the book on his traditional English dramatic training and upbringing. I have no idea what he wants to do next. But the world’s his oyster after this. I expect he’ll do more Shakespeare, but from now on, he’ll be able to have a different life.”

(After post-production on “Hamlet,” which is due for delivery in October and scheduled for U.S. release before the end of this year, Branagh will turn to writing a script for Castle Rock titled “Provocation,” said to be about corruption in the movie business.)

Maloney also notes that Branagh likes to absorb and contemplate Shakespearean texts before committing them to film: “This ‘Hamlet’ tallies with his approach to ‘Henry V,’ which he played on stage at Stratford, then thought about for five years before making the movie. He has this slow buildup. He allows things to filter.”

Yet Branagh’s greatest achievement is that he has built up an entire repertory company of film industry collaborators--not just acting stalwarts like Briers and Jacobi, but crew people, too. One notices that even some of the construction workers are walking around wearing “Henry V” T-shirts--testament to their long relationship with Branagh. No individual has provided more jobs in the British film industry over the last decade.

“We’ve all been together seven or eight years,” Branagh says, “and this is the project--all the skills, experience and practice we’ve developed are going into this. Whatever the reception for this film, because of the completeness of the text and its healthy creative ambition, I think in some way we’re all jointly working on a good deed in a naughty world.”

They’re working on it at a price, of course--Branagh says the $18 million is the absolute minimum on which, with help from everyone (like actors working for nominal fees), the film could be made to high standards.

“Castle Rock has been brave about the whole thing,” Branagh says, “and at this budget they have a chance of getting their money back. They’ve been very understanding and they’ve really gotten behind us. There’s been no interference, and though the casting choices have been eclectic, they’ve been entirely mine. And if I’d had $50 million and six months perhaps the film might have lost something. A little edge, maybe.”

Everyone around the “Hamlet” set is calm about making a film lasting 3 1/2 hours. Branagh is heartened that recent lengthy films like “Heat,” “Casino” and “Nixon” have found audiences big enough for the lower-budget “Hamlet” to make its money back with ease.

“Remember too,” says Michael Maloney, “there’s a big education market for Shakespeare in the States and elsewhere, and this film will be a must, because it’s the complete text. And now films have a prolonged life on video; you can easily see this as a two-video set with a booklet.”

“Oh, we’re not going to make $100 million,” Branagh says with a chuckle. “Luckily that’s not a pressure. I just feel released and it’s wonderful to feel you’re doing what you ought to be doing. The only pressure is to do the film well. The first obligation is to make this a great movie--and we’re well on our way to doing that within the terms we’ve set.”