It’s true. Jeremy Irons in this scene in Henry IV? He’s blasting through it. Slow down Jeremy. You’re supposed to be heartbroken. Yeah a little mad, but heartbroken over Harry.
and THIS? from Henry V? Christ Branagh, it looks like Monty Python. The music is swell enough, but…man. Try actually talking to your men instead of thinking “God I sound awesome!”
So many times I see Shakespeare done by Brits and they’ve just fallen in love with their own voices and act like they haven’t done any work on what they are supposed to be saying.
And Branagh’s Hamlet? Looks awesome. But Branagh ,and Jacobi ,just blast through their speeches. You know who really moved me? Heston. An American.
Often when I see Americans do Shakespeare, they have this attitude of "This is really important! And I really want to get this right and let people know what is going on. whereas many Brits just fake it. “I’ll just stick to the Iambic and fuck the audience.”
I’m not saying I can’t follow what’s going on. Oh I can follow it. I’m just saying that Brits are overrated at doing Shakespeare.
I’m going to make a point of seeing “The Hollow Crown”. I did like some of what I saw of Hiddleston. (Though his “I will imitate the sun” speech seemed lacking. It may have been an advert though and not the real thing) There’s no denying he and Irons are good actors.
edit: I should point out that Jack Lemmon, an American in Hamlet, admitted he had no idea what he was doing.
Well, its not a documentary, its theater. In fact it’s the ultimate theater! Personally I think Branagh’s performance of the ‘cart speech’ from Henry V to be the greatest cinematic version of anything of Shakespeare’s. I mean compare it to the (IMO) rather overly-fast, unemotional rendition by none other than the great Laurence Olivier…
The best advice I’ve ever heard about performing Shakespeare is, “Don’t make it precious.”
Irons and Branaugh, in the linked clips, really do seem to be coasting along, as though the words are magical and will automatically make the scene amazing. Branaugh’s speech falls flat for me because he seems too confident that his words will have the desired effect; there’s hardly any back-and-forth between him and his men. Olivier’s version is, IMO, better. There’s a sense of the stakes, at least. That version falls flat, too, though. I still get the sense of one man speaking in virtual isolation, and the men around him are mostly window dressing. Talk to your men, Henry. Change their minds, even if you yourself don’t believe a word of what you’re saying.
Tom Hiddleston and Ben Whishaw are fantastic in The Hollow Crown, as was Simon Russell Beale, who played Falstaff. Go watch all three parts!
Surprisingly, I enjoyed the delivery of Shakespeare’s dialogue in Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing much better than in Kenneth Branagh’s. The vast majority of the actors in Whedon’s did a really good job of making the language sound natural.
In a movie, you don’t have to declaim the dialog so the guys in the cheap seats can still hear. You can just say it. Say it like you’re a guy who’s saying something, rather than like a guy who has been given the assignment to declaim Shakespeare’s immortal words.