Kenneth Branagh has been told a few too many times what a clever, clever young man he is. This has been evident for some time now, from the soggy Peter's Friends to the pseudo-noir Dead Again to even the delightful Much Ado About Nothing (you know-tha
t Michael Keaton's ludicrously over-the-top Dogberry was Ken-coaxed, all the way-"How wacky we all are," Ken must have thought with satisfaction). Only Henry V managed to completely elude Branagh's proclivity for self-indulgence. No nudge-nudge-wink-wink
sight gags or bug-eyed bravad-just straightforward, masterful storytelling.
The cleverness factor reaches queasy new heights in Branagh's A Midwinter's Tale, which follows the trials and tribulations of Joe Harper (Michael Maloney of Henry V), an out-of-work British actor who struggles to mount a production of Hamlet in an ag ing provincial church. He manages to scrape together six novices to cover Hamlet's 24 roles, including one poor fellow who must play both Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Opening night falls on Christmas Eve, allowing just two weeks for rehearsals.
The hopeful actors who stumble into Harper's office during casting sequences are fitting representatives for the movie as a whole-they're trying too hard, straining for credibility and achieving only bathos, dancing as fast as they can. All the stock characters are here: Nina (Julia Sawalha of Absolutely Fabulous), the myopic romantic who takes an obligatory pratfall now and then; Tom (Nicholas Farrell), the cartoonishly intense ac-tor with perpetually furrowed brow, who intones, "Hamlet is me, Hamlet is Bosnia, Hamlet is this desk;" the weathered, also-ran old trouper (Richard Briers); the campy queen (John Sessions) who gets his wish to play Gertrude. Zany antics ensue, an attempt to match the feel of Shakespeare's ensemble comedies, but the problem is that the players are all working the back row of the theater. Their performances are too broad for such an intimate little movie, especially one as tightly shot as this-the cavernous, spookily gorgeous church is rarely showcased, and the few outside c amera shots are kept low, hovering over the characters' heads. Such tight quarters with loud company are a strain on the nerves.
The repartee between the mismatched actors, which is obviously intended to be the film's driving force, is forced and unwieldy. An example: following the first read-through, Tom exclaims, "I can't believe the cuts!" He repeats this lament, twice. Anot her character replies, with rapid-fire timing, "Tom, can you believe the cuts?" As I said, zaniness ensues. There just aren't any big laughs in this comedy, but what's worse is that it's so aggressive about its unfunniness. "Come on, laugh! Laugh! What's wrong with you?" the characters seem to be screaming. Then, to prove their point, they come up with a witty rejoinder or fall down a flight of stairs.
All of this would be tolerable had the film not turned robotically manipulative about halfway through. Suddenly, characters start having epiphanies or breakdowns, all related to Hamlet. Nina breaks down during one of Ophelia's scenes, reminded of her dead husband when she tearily sings, "He never will come again." "Gertrude" is wracked by guilt over the son he doesn't see too often, and "this play brings it back more than I thought possible," he says. Meanwhile, all the folks are bonding. Briers' char acter, who begins the movie claiming crabbily that "British theater is dominated by the class system and Oxford queens," ends up as Sessions' character's closest confidante; at the end we even see them dancing together, because this whole experience has m ade Briers so, y'know, enlightened.
These contrivances are exacerbated by the inherently silly nature of the film. Branagh wants to have it both ways-he wants Keith (Mark Hadfield) to reflect soberly on his failure to meet his parents' expectations in one scene, then to be the main play er in a strained sight gag (involving pantomime of changing a tire) in the next. Branagh is cheating, sacrificing consistency of characterization coverage of all the dramatic bases-comedic one moment, mildly tragic the next. The film's climactic scene com es when Joe finally loses his composure in front of his troupe. Screaming and hand-wringing replace wackiness for a single, cringe-worthy scene, in which he curses "this miserable, tormented life" and demands, "What is it that makes this f-f-fucking life worth living?" Then, stunningly, the actors begin to answer-"My son," for instance, or "You, Joe, you make life worth living!" You'd think you were out in the woods with Robert Bly, attending a self-actualization session with all your most pretentious fri ends.
The final outcome isn't anything that you couldn't figure out after the first 10 minutes, which wouldn't be so bad had it been a good time getting there. Branagh, at this point, would be well-advised to stick to those Shakespeare adaptations that brou ght him all his success in the first place. As an interpreter and adapter of the Bard's work, Branagh is graceful and knowing. As a writer of original drama, he's still running in place. **
Copyright 1996, The Yale Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.
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