Death on the Nile (another Kenneth Brannagh spectacular)

I just saw a trailer for this (here) and I admit I will watch it, when I can do so for free. Unfortunately, I saw the Ustinov version and have read the book, so I know the key plot device in unravelling whodunit. Therefore suspense will be nil.

Brannagh’s mustache seems even more ridiculous than the last two times, if possible, and his acting hammier. However, the cast looks like it should be very good. Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French together again, Saunders in the Bette Davis role, and French in the Maggie Smith role as her paid companion, so their interactions should be delicious. Annette Benning is in it, and she’s always good. Gal Gadot and Emma Mackey as the women fighting over Armie Hammer.

These film are starting to feel a little bit like Steve Martin’s attempt to recreate Inspector Clouseau. They don’t feel like adaptations of Agatha Christie as much as they feel like (unnecessary) adaptations of Peter Ustinov.

Any new version of an existing property, especially costume dramas like Agatha Christie or Charles Dickens, are for younger contemporary audiences, not us crusty oldies who have seen every version already and have long ago stubbornly decided on a favourite.

And when I say ‘younger’ I mean 35-45yr olds who haven’t seen them before, not teens. (Teens of today will have their new remakes in 2040, when the old characters will be played by Zac Efron and Dakota Fanning)

I don’t know if you can watch it in the US, but here in England we have every Christie story starring David Suchet on ITV Hub.

Agatha Christie’s Poirot - Watch episodes - ITV Hub

Yes, thank you, we have an elegant sufficiency of Suchet, everywhere we turn.

David Suchet’s run as Hercule Poirot was definitive. Everything about his performances from the appearance, the accent, the mannerisms is exactly how I believe Agatha Christie wrote the character to be.

Now that doesn’t mean I’m against anyone else taking on the role. Before Suchet was cast for a TV show, Peter Ustinov was quite good when he played Poirot on the big screen. His version of Death on the Nile with co-stars including David Niven, Bette Davis, Angela Lansbury, Maggie Smith and Mia Farrow was excellent. And in one of the movies Suchet played Inspector Japp! But Kenneth Brannagh’s interpretation of Poirot to me is very poor. More star names, more glamour, but it feels generic.

Have to agree here; however, this:

So, I will see this movie.

The role was practically written for her. Not a big fan of hers in general, but love her in this role.

I love Agatha Christie, and generally am disappointed with film and TV adaptations, with the 74 Murder on the Orient Express being one of the few things I just love (not surprised to find out that Christie herself said it was her favorite film version of any of her works). However, Death on the Nile is not a book I care for as much as some of her others (although, like pizza, mediocre Christie is still Christie); in that vein, then I think the movie succeeds, mainly because my expectations were not as high as they have been in other cases.

I try not to make the earliest version of a film be the definitive one in my mind-- just because of the date of the technology of film, why should certain version get to be the best? And after all, if “The first is the best” persists as a rule, the the Ingrid Bergman version of Gaslight doesn’t get to be the best. Brannagh is, generally speaking, extremely talented. His Murder on the Orient Express was still a gawd-awful mess, of which his moustache could stand as a review.

Still going to see Death on the Nile. Maybe even in the theater, just because I’m a teacher, and I have time off now.

I’m not sure what you mean by generic-- it feels to me like someone who didn’t even read any actual whole Christie novels, but maybe some wikipedia-type entries about the character, and thought it might be fun. It almost seems like a very weak parody of the character-- like something from SNL in 1988.

That’s basically what I mean. Visually the movie was fantastic but I feel like Peter Ustinov’s version of Death On The Nile 40 years earlier was a better movie because Poirot is supposed to be unique as a detective. He is a brilliant thinker and pieces together parts of a puzzle in a studious way but at the same time can be quite odd, awkward and sometimes irritable in his methods. I didn’t see that in Kenneth Brannagh.

I think then, maybe we agree-- when I saw Murder on the Orient Express, it wasn’t so much that the character was wrong as absent, and with so much in the books to work with, it was like someone didn’t do the homework, and was trying to BS through it.

I’ve not read any of the books, but I have seen the original MotOE and DotN movies, and the Branagh remake of Murder. It seemed to me that Branagh played Poirot as quirkier than Albert Finney did, or maybe in a more understood way. I watched the original as a whodunit; trying to figure out who the killer was. When I saw the remake, I knew who the killer was, so it was less a whodunit than a character study of Poirot. It starts with him complaining that he can’t get two perfectly matched eggs for breakfast. He’s clearly got OCD. I don’t know if that would have been understood by viewers in '74.

And quit picking on Branagh’s 'stache. I’ve been growing one like it, myself.

You can really tell how they all but abolished Armie Hammer from that trailer.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: they made him too fat. He was supposed to be a small man with an egg-shaped head and a touch of embonpoint (i.e. he was a little pigeon-breasted). That fat suit they had him in made him look like he had escaped from a Batman movie. Perhaps Ustinov had made enough of an impression in the role that they thought Poirot ought to be fat, but in Ustinov’s case it was unavoidable. They didn’t have that excuse with Suchet.

Also I never thought his mustache was large enough to be remarkable (as it was always being remarked upon in the books). Albert Finney’s was nearer the mark. Brannagh’s is just grotesque.

Nor by by readers of the novel at the time it came out. Nor by Christie herself. It’s a bit presumptuous of you to diagnose it in someone when it clearly could not have been put there with deliberate clinical knowledge by Christie.

Not that Christie could not have observed the behavior of a person so afflicted in someone she knew, and lifted the behaviors for her literary character.

However, what is relevant is not whether Poirot had OCD (the anxiety disorder), OCPD (the personality disorder), or some other diagnosable syndrome that produced similar symptoms; what is relevant is that people catered to it (a little more obsequiously in the film then in the novels, and the behavior in the Brannagh is made kind of silly; nonetheless, it does happen in the original). This says something about the figure Poirot cut. When everyone defers to him like this, and pretty much what he has done in life is be a detective, well, then he must be a good one. It’s really quite clever of Christie. Much better than an aside reciting a number of cases a la Nancy Drew.

I thought Albert Finney was great in the role. He always gets smeared as the worst of the Poirots (albeit, there have been many good ones, and it’s a little like your 85% becoming an F because the teacher grades on a class average), and it’s a shame, because he wasn’t bad at all, he did have the best moustache. He also gets props for playing middle-aged when he was young-- it’s one thing to play old when you are young, but playing middle-aged is much more difficult.

My favorite bit from the Wikipedia article on Poirot is:

  • Christie’s daughter Rosalind Hicks observed Ustinov during a rehearsal and said, “That’s not Poirot! He isn’t at all like that!” Ustinov overheard and remarked "He is now! "

I suspect I may be a bigger fan of Ustinov than Poirot or Agatha Christie.

Yes, but it was understood at the time Branagh was playing Poirot, which is what I was describing.

…and the settings will be adapted to take place in space (Death on Neptune? The Orion Express?)

But even then he’s missing basic things. The moustache is part of his character - it’s him being a vain little man who also has a brilliant brain. It’s not a big messy grey thing. Well, the brain is, but not the tache.

I’ll definitely watch it anyway, and will try to give Branagh’s Poirot a chance, but mainly it’ll be for the other characters. The casting looks perfect.

Sounds like lots of people are talking about going to see the movie, but no one came back to talk about it?

I just watched it last night, and I was rather shocked at how bad it was. Very synthetic feeling. The overuse of CGI didn’t help that at all. The acting was mostily mediocre. Poor Gal Gadot. She’s a really terrible actress. I was so confused all during the movie – what was her ethnicity supposed to be?

French and Saunders were gimmicky casting and didn’t really work. There were so many anachronisms I was wondering why Branagh didn’t just movie to a more contemporary time. The dance scenes were really odd and overly choreographed. The initial blues club dancing bordered on soft core porn.

And that entire stupid opening sequence! Branagh had to change Poirot into some romantic and at the same time create some lame excuse for his moustache. And a farmer??? Poirot was not a farmer. He was a policeman. He was a city man. Oh, and not to mention, if he had that much scarring around his mouth, he likely couldn’t even grow hair there.

Just a mess.

I haven’t seen the Ustinov version, but I’m a huge fan of David Suchet’s Poirot. He’s the definitive Poirot to me.