(oh boy. my hatred for kenneth branagh is divided into three categories: my hatred for him as an actor, my hatred for him as a director, and my hatred for him as a person. starting with as an actor, i have a disclaimer: i don't think he's bad in EVERYTHING. his lockhart his funny and his king henry is pretty good. but, his poirot in murder on the orient express (one of the most ICONIC crime stories and detectives) is very underwhelming and don't even get me STARTED on his hamlet. hamlet has continued to be performed for hundreds of years, and for good reason. because it still hurts, because we can still relate!! for example, to be or not to be is one of the saddest monologues of all time (hence why it's so famous), but branagh's hamlet overacts it so severely i almost laughed. instead of thinking about the tragedy of (whats supposed to be) a college student caught between whether or not to take his own life, i'm thinking about how much better david tennant did this. as for branagh as a director, yes, he's made some ok films, but we can again look to hamlet. hamlet has an absolutely all star cast, there is no reason for this movie not to be groundbreaking. but branagh makes these odd choices, sometimes in contradiction to what shakespeare (as in, the man widely considered to be the best playwright of all time). for example, osric dies???? why???? shakespeare is pretty clear about who dies, leave lyric alone. osric is supposed to be a tinge of comedic relief in a rather dismal play, and we've already seen the trope of comedic relief getting killed (rosencrantz and guildenstern). there is LITERALLY no reason to kill osric, and it takes away from the central struggle between hamlet and laertes. also, when fortinbras takes over elsinore, he does so violently. fortinbras' arrival is supposed to be a moment of an almost peacefulness, or a realization of horatio's new life as he's surrounded by bodies, like the cemetery of what denmark once was. instead of allowing the audience to quietly mourn, we're taken over with more violence, which is meaningless to us. it's also important that fortinbras isn't violent as he acts as a foil to hamlet: hamlet, who solves things with violence, versus fortinbras, who solves things with tragedy, each out to avenge their fathers. branagh's decision to make fortinbras violently storm elsinore takes away from all of this. finally, what the HELL was hamlet's death scene? for example, in david tennant's version, hamlet is cradled in horatio's arms as he dies. we get to see up close and personal as horatio attempts to take his own life by drinking the poison, and hamlet's last words to his only true friend. meanwhile, in branagh's film, hamlet dies, like, ACROSS THE ROOM from horatio. this takes away so much of the meaning - not to mention that it seems like he's afraid of the homoerotic dogwhistles swimming through their conversation. hey man, shakespeare wrote it that way on purpose. finally, we have branagh as a person. first of all, i really dislike the way he treats the protagonist of as you like it, rosalind. rosalind is very similar to hamlet in a lot of ways, brooding, thinking. branagh LOVES hamlet, but hates rosalind on account of the fact that he thinks she talks too much. HELLO???? NO SHAKESPEARE CHARACTER SPEAKS MORE THAN HAMLET???? it's ok to like hamlet, but you can't like him and dislike a character for something that he also does and pretend thats the only reason. on a more major account, branagh's affair was disgusting. emma thompson is a gift to this earth and he cheated on her very, very publicly. if you've seen love, actually, the scene where emma thompson cries about her s/o cheating on her is based entirely on her marriage to branagh. he absolutely broke her, making no effort to keep it private and publicly humiliating her. this is, in short, why i hate branagh. oh, also, sorry this is so long hahah)
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