Kenneth Branagh interview on "Hamlet" (1996)

when he was 15 years old Kenneth Ranas life changed after seeing derek jacobi performed Hamlet 20 years later he directs Jacobi in his own film adaptation of the Shakespearean classic Branagh also wrote the screenplay and stars in the title role he brings the epic tragedy to the big screen in full text and 70 millimeter film the four-hour adaptation is set in the 19th century and opens on Christmas Day and I am pleased to have him back at this table welcome thank you very much Johnny why did you at this time tackle this huge Rocchi well it has been something that's preoccupied me some would say obsessed me for the last 20 years certainly when I saw it I was so overwhelmed it was my first major theatrical experience I went on my own to see it I went to see this in Belfast no this was back in reading we've moved I moved when I was about nine and I was about at this stage 1516 watching TVs I Claudius Derek Jacobi that's why I'd gone I didn't know anything about Hamlet and it was such a thrilling evening that the theater was pulsating with life just the whole experience got under your skin I couldn't believe that all this passion emotion could you know could be in one piece and at the end you go wonderful physical climax with a sword fight which was brilliantly done and you know as Kenneth Tynan once said you know the experience of watching a great play means that you know we sometimes understand a little more about why we're alive when I left that I don't know if I understood that but I did feel alive I felt better I felt that this I just went away with a feeling of excitement it stayed with me for days so when I got to drama school and started become an actor it was a part and a player that began to be the focus of my attention and I got a chance to play at the intervening 20 years including a production that Derek Jacobi directed me in and it's been a process of trying to understand as clearly as I can a story which is subject to all sorts of cliches sad man in tights old skull you know self-indulgent navel-gazing why are we interested in such a kind of melancholy bugger and and finding as I as I felt was there and a kind of very lively curious bright vibrant story that is not about people predisposed to be manic-depressives but people struggling with the business of being alive ideally with the grief the loss of one's parents family crises you know and suddenly your mother marries again to someone you don't approve of in this case your cool sibling relationships between Laertes and a philia the rivalry you know from men for the affections of women in in tight sort of family groups all of these things plus a great thriller story and the challenge to try and mean a tell a great story and have this wonderful debate about about human issues is something that that at this stage I thought I must do this I must do it before I get too old yeah because you may want to play it differently if you were too old you have to play this when you're a certain age I think I mean in the Texas 30 use 30 years old and I think that's a significant it's one of those casting issues where by the time you get old enough to perhaps understand it as fully as it needs to be you may be a little older than you you you should be Olivier was 40 for instance when he played Hamlet on screen yeah tell me about this there's a thing in which I say Jack to Jacob and Jakob is it what's the correct pronunciation B Jacobi he presented you after your performance on stage I think with the red book which was a tactful beautiful red book which goes back as far as Ford Robertson who was a Hamlet at the turn of the century and includes Michael Redgrave and Peter O'Toole at a number of people who passed it on with the idea that it should be given to the person they regarded as the next Hamlet that's so the recipient gets to pass it on and make a choice yeah and with the proviso that the recipient passes it on to the next Hamlet so my job is to pass it on to the guy that I see coming up who's the right hand just to show you that this is not a subject that I was not interested in early roll tape this is an interview the you and I did some time ago maybe 1993 three years ago here it is but Hamlet is is the character that you of all of Shakespearean characters the one that you most like the most want to play most enjoy feel the most range for yes I yeah because for me John Gielgud described it described the part and the players summing up the process of living and I think it does theirs although it Shakespeare very cleverly just as perhaps he would now if he was writing for movies he takes a popular form maybe today it would be a thriller then it was a revenge drama boy told by his dead father I was murdered you have to revenge me and that's that's the plot that's what happens so that the story is you know how he does that but by the by you have a man in turmoil commenting and reacting in a sort of early midlife crisis to everything that goes on around him which involves his views on family his views on religion his views on war his views on politics and you get this incredible mind dissecting all of this because his emotions and his intellect is intensified and sharpened by this awful awful situation that he's put into and so it said the byproduct of a great yarn is this incredible debate about about everything that celebrates the glories of man and the utter insignificance of man in the cosmos so with that kind of you know material you know it's endlessly fascinating when will you put that on film well I don't know it's it's there have been eighty-one film versions I know Bill Gibson did the latest AG exactly yes it did a very good job and I don't know that the world is waiting on another one but but I'm a little too close to the last productions and quite know when or if but I'd love to I'd love to what significance is that version that Mel Gibson did on film was about what an hour and a half two hours exercise I think just over to you the full text version is over four hours it's three hours 58 minutes okay almost for our vision yeah but you also because of the theater owners made a two-hour version or to something version well in fact there is it just over to our version but that will only be available to perhaps Airlines or the odd country the what I have in fact heard that most people said no just offer the for Harvard well in fact you know the response of cinema owners partly in response to people customers who've anticipated the film thank God I've said no we want to see the full version they've decided to treat it with the kind of event status that we hope they would because you ain't going to see this every five minutes it is the full-length version and it is easier to watch I promise it is easier to watch Shakespeare's structure is that much more compelling because you get a chance to allow him to switch mood you have an intense moment he changes it with comedy he quickens the pace he slows the pace he gives you kind of breaths to take it in in cut versions in the theater a lot of these intense set pieces are squashed very close together it's harder for the actors to play and it's harder for the audience to accept I think that this is a more complete entertainer and you know you do get to go to the loo in the middle so there's a break halfway here is a very public ah putting it together did you feel because of Frankenstein was not a huge success my name is by no means you know at the same time you haven't changed I mean all that talent that everybody you know had to prove so much in other performances and in other film that in other theatrical productions was still there do you feel like you've got to prove something here do you feel like this is I had something to prove to myself which was that it was important beyond the considerations of all should there be another Hamlet or you know is it right to do another Shakespeare that in fact I should follow my instincts this project was about following my creative instinct if I had to prove something I suspect that last thing on earth I should try and do is do a four-hour movie wait four hours is because of the time not because of it because the immensity of well a bit of both but I mean basically just in terms of trying to get it financed it was an enormous challenge and as you can imagine even since it was made you know and right up to now really when people the tide is beginning to turn we hope we touch wood I mean within the business from people who Sybil is a sort of commercial suicide it's all right to go back to your own territory why don't you do a nice comedy you know why do you have to give us something that was done six years ago well because I passionately believe that it hasn't been done the fullest justice - on screen because people have not included every character they've not had a chance to make the connection the play makes between the very personal story of a family in crisis and an epic that that changes that the the ruler of a nation by the end of the play so when you set sail to do this it was a more a question of confronting rough seas than finding a safe haven absolutely you know I think that even I begin to realize that's how I blow my own trumpet this was a brave thing to do it was a brave thing for everybody to be involved in you know people put the American actors came in people like Jared Depardieu came in a lot of actors who are unfamiliar with Shakespeare who came along because they wanted to join that particular unique event knew that everybody was up for grabs they weren't paid much it was undoubtedly a labor of love and I remember for the first time on any film I've made I gathered absolutely everyone together that they we've always started shooting about 300 people interview the caterers the drivers just to see you know whatever happens to this but we're doing something unique I'm not saying it's better than any other film but I'm telling you we're doing something unique this is for our kids for our kids kids this will never be done like this again and I believe you know whether this version of it is acknowledged or not that this piece that we're doing in its entirety is one of the greatest human achievement in the history of art across all the disciplines that is a fantastic privilege to be involved with and we should enjoy it and we did have a wonderful time and there was a great camaraderie and we all sort of tried you know very hard and very humbly I think to come up to this fellows writing you know with the idea that this was a one-off a wonderment what the fellows were writing I was writing so in other words Shakespeare has set the bar pretty very very high letter P so we're at rest if at least you can do just fairness to them yeah exactly because this is an immensely complex and elusive piece we have wonderful materials I thank God had an enormous amount of experience of the part there were as much as you can get and still be young enough to play it people like derek jacobi had been in the play many times we had so many Hamlet's in this Jacobi who played John Gielgud probably the hamlet of the century at 92 years old is a hamlet of the century well if you were to believe what the history books say and if I know on the åland played Hamlet yeah but I do you know that many people feel and on the evidence of recordings of Gielgud were audio recordings and some snatches that were actually caught on film he was actually offered the chance to play Hamlet by Alfred Hitchcock and he believed that in about 1930 when he'll it was was the sensation of London and he also played on Broadway and he chose not to do it because he didn't think much of the film medium and I think a decision he regretted for the rest of his life but the audio recordings of him are quite wonderful because he managed to to be lyrical and romantic and complex wonderfully intelligent people say about Olivier in his hand that of course that as soon as you see him that you can't believe that he wouldn't immediately avenge the death of his father because this is a man a complete action man you know he's he's so much more Henry v for some people are going to say that sir I mean Henry v you took on even though it is one of the great Olivier performed mm he took it on a course having had extraordinary performances in the past haunt him the great advantage he had in absolutely putting a seal on it was that he was the first one to do it on film all of those other great performances by Henry Irving or Forbes Robertson were ones that were caught in print by wonderful critics people like Haslett or not in that case has been people capable of Hazzard's gift of describing as he did with keen he said watching keen was like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning it's a wonderful way of putting it and Olivia had others to follow but then he did it on film and that kind of you know it was there you could refer to it there it is still on the on the video shelves or all these years later but you know the recent Romeo and Juliet I think proves the point that with a nationally accepted well sure and an utterly radical quite brilliant version of the play quite different from Zeffirelli's version in the late 60s which also really struck a nerve both absolutely tap into the heart of the play both sees the idea of adolescent love and all its preoccupations sex and violence and danger and illicit nurse in exactly the same way but from completely different points of view that just shows that that this man's material is classic I mean it went to the third done in a very different time absolutely over the centuries of course you know there's been hundreds of different stage productions that will set Hamlet in anywhere from a mental asylum to a circus and so it's now one of the more prominent examples in film of the way in which a classic text can be taken by Olivier by Mel Gibson Richard Burton you name it and and and each time the time itself and the people who do it throw a different life speaking of Burton he never did it on a film even though he had a brilliant performance on stage here in New York you know that was recorded on film and I think it was playful one day I was recorded on film yeah yes so they did it they did it and it produced and presented as a film and played in this country for one day like a a school holiday or something where all the schools in this nation I'm told were brought to it so there was an enormous box office take for one day Burton himself didn't like it and so he destroyed almost every copy but there is one remaining it's the national film theater in in London and I was very busy get a copy of it I have yeah no one around we can present Smith and I a wonderful vice and then very he was sexy God he was sexy charismatic out he was another one though you just felt well he if he has a shred of doubt in him I don't believe it but well do you have read about in you well some people would argue that I don't because I certainly don't agree with the theory that Hamlet is predisposed to be melancholy everything in the play that's written about him suggests a very lively intelligence and someone who faces problems and has great potential Fortinbras says had he been put on he would have proved most royal Claudius says he's loved of the distracted multitude this was a popular guy who really had every chance to be king you know when his father died had he not been at Wittenberg and Claudius as Hamlet says popped in between the election and my Hope's Hamlet could have been a great king instead he's faced with the traumatic circumstances of his father's death and and the knowledge with the with the visitation of the ghosts that the man on the throne actually killed his father that's what plunges him into this bitter angry non melancholic brooding yet excitable yes volatile yes but I think he's not disposed except at moments when he recognizes it himself - fits of self-indulgence he always catches himself on and it's spectacular in the rogue and peasant slave soliloquy all right before we get any further here clip - is they prey you throw to earth this won't say that line for me I pray you throw to earth this unproven ago which is Claudius's advice to Hamlet to kind of get a life roll tape that the language is it's just amazing I mean you know you think well I mean it's so comprehensible and so powerful and all the things that are well we had such a joy with this cast derek jacobi in particular is such a master of naturalism in shakespeare of just making it sound as though people are talking as we are talking and he there are some wonderfully complex scenes that exist in the full version of the play particularly as seen in the second half when he deals with Laertes and they plan the kind of the duel that they're going to cheat on Hamlet in and it's a scene you never see in its entirety in the theatre he does it so wonderfully well in preparing for this two questions first did for a moment you say although I've done it long before maybe this time for this role I'll let someone else direct it and I'll just be him well it's a funny thing Charlie I mean these two things are so into web and I wanted to play Hamlet in a in a film where I felt that every other character was done justice to in a theater for instance the women characters which quite frankly if Shakespeare isn't revolving in his grave are underwritten the character of Gertrude is a hugely important figure in the story has less to say than the first gravedigger and yet she's one of the main motivating people for Hamlet it's extraordinary relationship to have Julie Christie in there to be able to see in reactions and in the Illustrated flashbacks a chance for that story to develop for a failures back story with Hamlet between used to play as a physical relationship to talk about the outside influences Denmark about to go to war Fortinbras about to invade the sense that the country is on edge it's not just this family was very important to me I would have been sad to play at reduction of Hamlet where you know where in fact the prime concern was just me you know and vice versa preaching to the converted when you talk to me about doing this kind of thing because I mean it is in the end your vision bring out the best of your acting yeah because you know once all those things are there that Hamlet is stronger too it isn't a story about just one man second part of the question though did you go to look at burdens Hamlet and Olivier's Hamlet and other Hamlet's to be in gild goods Hamlet to be informed would you know I gathered them all I had them all pride that more than added which Chamberlain's idea McKellen's and I got my Knights and I rarely watched them I would occasionally look at a moment to see how they'd solved a particular problem in the play but I didn't watch them in total because once we started to prepare this it was definitely our own thing it became our own thing and we chose a look and a setting and a feel for it that was at least in film terms original why did you choose this setting it was a time in Europe you know that that we wanted to evoke a time when the large extended royal families the Hapsburgs and the Romanovs you know had an enormous amount of political power where there was much intrigue and scandal within those families and where much of the bickering and many of the arranged marriages that that went on ended up regularly changing the borders of Europe so it seems evocative of a time when countries changed hands quite regularly and when there was a lot of scandal and intrigue about the people in power but they were royal families with direct political power it was also a sexy period to look at opulent and rather corrupt you know and and full of excess of which you know the Czarist regime is probably the clearest example so we borrow in terms of colour costume styles and shapes from from those places but it's also an impression of that time so that we we keep us unspecific as we can in order not to nail the play down it's not about the 19th century it's about Hamlet and the 19th century in this impressionistic way I have let's the play go around in get thee to a nunnery would set that up for well we have Hamlet Ophelia meeting each other for the first time since she has been barred from his company by her father who believes him to be mad for her love we've set up a physical relationship between the two of them they adore each other and now having not seen each other for some time in the intervening period she's breaking her heart over him he's been told his father was murdered by the ghost of his father they need each other more than ever and they're further apart than they ever possibly could imagine roll tape very well ah how many takes for something like that well that's the kind of thing where you know the intensity of the scene this is Hamlet probably at his most distressed where he feels most abandoned by in his mind yet another woman and so it's the kind of thing that technically in that set was difficult because there are so many mirrors around and so many potential for reflecting the camera seeing the actual camera plus the intensity the scene means that you rehearse it technically as dryly as you can for that maybe four or five takes and probably you hear that too it has all kinds of CL as ability of things but you've got to be very careful when you when you sort of tie yourself to something like that that you don't under or overcook the acting in the meantime cost you 18 million to make this film in really cheap I advised energy certainly is somebody said the other day looked like a 75 million dollar movie and I was delighted to hear that the 70 millimeter helps enormous yeah I asked about that what's the differences well a different view if you lit the film is this thick if you you know roll it out it looks like a series of postcards it's four times the size of four times the amount of negative than in 35 mil and then therefore the picture quality is so much sharper at its best the skin tones and then the colors are richer the landscapes you know look 3d at times it's it's just a wonderful extra memorable element to the piece it was particularly thrilling to use it with this kind of period setting and finally someone comes to you and says Mr Branagh there's a lot of stuff I need to do with my life I'm a very busy person tell me what Hamlet means to my time and the life that I have with myself and my family going into a new century well I guess I'd I'd say on one level if you want to be entertained you just want you know two hours double feature-length for the price of one movie you want to be entertained see this if you want to you know if you're interested sometimes in wondering why you become anxious or upset about anything if you're not permanently happy with your life if you sometimes wonder why you feel sad for no particular reason why you worry about things if you have any problems with your existence at all if you are anxious about anything go see a man who has the same kind of issues and who deals with them through the words of a very very great poet and your walk away inspired Kenneth Branagh Starr director producer Hamlet opening across America on Christmas Day we'll be right back

Channel: Manufacturing Intellect

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Length: 20min 44sec (1244 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 18 2016