kenneth branagh hamlet full movie youtube

The cast-list is practically a who’s-who of British show-business, from venerable veterans like Ian Holm and Judi Dench to up-and-comers like Robbie Coltrane and Emma Thompson.

Yet the 1989 Henry V is just as much of a showcase for Branagh’s contemporaries and mentors. Branagh makes each of Henry’s big moments memorable, striking different tones in his performance, and giving each its own look-from the slowly circling camera during Henry’s soliloquy to the muddy realism of his addresses to the troops.

The title character stays at center stage for most of Henry V, delivering speeches and strategizing over how he can expand his reign from England to France.

Then he begins to speak to his advisers in a calm murmur, as though overcompensating for his youth by trying to sound controlled and nonchalant. He gives himself a memorable introduction as King Henry, magisterially entering a throne-room with a flood of light silhouetting him. Watching Shout! Factory’s new Blu-ray edition of Henry V, it’s striking how baby-faced Branagh looks, and how confident he is behind the camera. It’s been an enviable career by any common measure-just not exactly the one Branagh seemed like he was set to have back in 1989. As a director, he’s stayed committed to adapting Shakespeare, but has also signed on to helm routine blockbuster action-adventures like Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. As an actor, he’s settled into a career of doing character parts in Hollywood films and leads in British TV, between occasional returns to the stage. Kenneth Branagh was still in his 20s when he made his feature-film version of William Shakespeare’s Henry V, but he was already being talked about as the next Laurence Olivier: a classically trained actor and director who could lead his peers, make the theatrical canon accessible to contemporary audiences, and die a legend.

Kenneth branagh hamlet full movie youtube