Category: british

Hamlet (1996)
Written by William Shakespeare & Kenneth Branagh
Directed by Kenneth Branagh

If there was one Shakespeare play I would choose as my introduction to the writer, it would be Hamlet. I wouldn’t pick it because it is the easiest to read but because it exemplifies those literary elements that make Shakespeare’s work resonate across cultures and eras. Kenneth Branagh made this production based on the text presented in the First Folio, which is considered the most official version. That said, the director also allowed himself to play with the images. Flashbacks are employed throughout in a manner that couldn’t have been possible on stage. The result is what I believe to be THE film adaptation of Hamlet.

Richard III (1995)
Written by William Shakespeare & Ian McKellan and Richard Loncraine
Directed by Richard Loncraine

Shakespeare was no stranger to putting despicable people at the center of his narratives. The point was often to explore them in more complexity than a one-dimensional story might provide. He didn’t excuse evil but wanted to understand how these minds operated. How else can we prevent future evil if we don’t understand the roots of the present one? Richard III is a profoundly evil figure who revels in the suffering he causes others, yet he doesn’t exist in a vacuum. He is the byproduct of a cruel system that inevitably makes people like him. 

Henry V (1989)
Written by William Shakespeare & Kenneth Branagh
Directed by Kenneth Branagh

Many millennials’ earliest film experience with Shakespeare was probably Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, which we will review soon. However, that was not the start of the Shakespearean renaissance in film. While the Bard’s plays have always been popular in one form or another, Kenneth Branagh’s work produced several of the most complete film adaptations of the stage plays. Henry V was Branagh’s directorial debut, followed by four more pictures (Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and As You Like It).