My Review of Henry V (1989) directed by Kenneth Branagh

Mars touches France

This play adapts the last of William Shakespeare's plays on the Wars of the Roses and the Henriad. This is also the first feature film directed by one of the greatest Shakespearean actors of all time Kenneth Branagh. After years acting and directing at the Royal Shakespeare Company, he finally got his way to Hollywood on the start of his run of Shakespeare films. He uses this star-studded cast to tell the story of Henry V using scenes from Henry IV, part 1 & Henry IV part 2 (both which had been adapted by the BBC Television Shakespeare and would be adapted again by the BBC for their Hallow Crown series). This was the first major adaptation of the play since Laurence Olivier's WWII era pro-war adaptation.

This movie comes at the end of the Cold War and unlike Olivier's adaptation is of a distinct anti-war character. We begin the play with the decision and scheme to lay claim to more French land as we were still in the middle of the 100 Years War between England and France. This movie covers England's greatest success in the war (Shakespeare's first and second plays covers England losing that war). It is not an easy victory and it seems every step forward the English make is at great cost and the movie is always questioning and interrogating if this was all worth it in a way that Olivier did not dare do in 1944. Even the climactic St Crispin's Day Speech is delivered by Branagh (playing King Henry) with a sorrow and exhaustion that even the triumphal background music could not hide (this was that late80s-90s era of Hollywood movies being afraid of any scene not having incidental music). The speech made the night before the St Crispin's Day Speech by a soldier to King Henry is the one that I think about a lot: "But if the cause be not good, the King himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopp'd off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all, "We died at such a place"; some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of anything, when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the King that led them to it; who to disobey were against all proportion of subjection." 

One has to be truly amazed at this movie. Shakespeare films marketed towards a wide audience are always risky (as Branagh himself would find out in his latter Shakespeare adaptations), but Branagh nails it here and it would do to great acclaim in the the early to mid 1990s. This play is near the same level as Ran (1985) in the depiction of war in a Shakespeare movie adaptation—Edwin Starr would certainly agree that war is as brutal. The fact is, you can't call yourself a Shakespeare movie fan if you have not yet seen this movie yet.