Movie Comparison: My Beginners By Kenneth Branagh

Jacob Vigil
Lit 225
Instructor Sokolowski
3 August 2014
Movie Comparison Before I watched the 1989 Henry V, I did a little background on the play and found and interesting quote by the director Kenneth Branagh that stuck out to me. He says on a PBS article, “Although we’ve cut things, we haven't changed the lines or tried to simplify anything. Rather the opposite, we've tried to make as entertainingly complex as possible this extraordinary adventure story that has the power to move us, enrage us, inspire us, perplex us.” Reading this play in this class was by far my favorite Shakespeare work due to its drama, inspiring speeches, and action. I think one way of interpreting this version from Shakespeare’s is to pay notice to the
aspects that have been excluded from the original. When watching the film version of the play and putting it through scrutiny I have determined that what has been left out has the reasons to contributing to the divergence between film and theatre. At the beginning of the film, particularly in the preface, we already see the differences.
The addition of the Chorus as a character in the film is something I was not expecting. In my Beginners Shakespeare handout I found online, the Chorus is typically a voice that comments throughout the play. They are like a narrator in a way, but in modern film it would be compared to a voice over. I believe what the director did here was very clever because it does two things. It first connects the audience, because the character is looking directly at the camera, as that is something that is out of the norm for film. What this does is takes the audience out of the reality of the play and shows its art form. Secondly, in this part it seems that having the setting behind the scenes of a film set really emphases the prologue function of the play, which is to introduce us to the stage. The film includes, “Or may we cram within this wooden O the very casques that did affright the air at Agincourt?” However, the film does edit out some
lines:
“Suppose within the girdle of these walls
Are now confined two mighty monarchies, Whose high up reared and abutting fronts The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder: Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts; 
Into a thousand parts divide on man, And make imaginary puissance; Think when we talk of horses, that you see them 
Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth (P.20-28).”
Shakespeare in this excerpt is conceding the drawback of having a play on the stage. The audience is unable to see the men on the battlefield or horses because there is obviously no room to fit them all on stage. He is imploring the audience to use vision to fill in these gaps. Why this most likely isn’t included in the film is because there is no limitations when it comes to modern film, all these things Shakespeare asks us to imagine are present in the play. Perhaps something that caught me off guard was an addition of scenes in the movie that were from Henry IV. When we are introduced to Flagstaff, Branagh uses some Henry IV lines, why he does this I do not know, but how I found this out was when I was following along with the movie and the novel simultaneously, I found this gaping hole and did a Google search of the lines “If sack and sugar be a fault…Do not thou when thou art king hang a thief,” and they were linked to Henry IV. During this scene of the play the voice over of Henry yet again links back to Henry IV, why these scenes include references to Henry IV I have no idea, maybe the director was trying to provide background to the King, or maybe they were trying to show Henry’s growth as a King. The last thing that I really wanted to compare the movie with the original playwright is King Henry’s two famous speeches, Speech at Harfleur and St.
Crispin’s Day speech. In the first speech there were differences between that could be seem easily. On a stage you do not have the realistic details such as mud, and fire that make an appearance in this scene. Watching the movie, you are catapulted into the intensity of the battle and thus I believe have an easier time equating to what King Henry is relaying to his troops, but still lines are left out.
For example: “Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof! 
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders, Have in these parts from morn till even fought 
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument (III.i.1106-1113).”
The only reason I can think of this line being left out is that you have the French laying down their swords without a fight, thus there is no battle to be fought. While a multi-million dollar film can afford battle scenes, it seems what my friend, who is a videographer, would call leaving that line out a “creative decision.” In St. Crispin’s Day speech you have the emotional music that would obviously be lacking in an original Shakespeare play, but you also have lines Act IV. iii. 2259-2269 cut of the movie which is King Henry talking about how he doesn’t want material things only honor, but Branagh cuts out this part and keeps the parts that seem to rally them men together as a “band of brothers
(2295).” I really enjoyed both the film and the theatre productions, as the original had the intent to connect to the audience of that era, while Henry V (1989) had the same intention of connecting to the people in that era. When you explore the differences between what was omitted in the prologue, the added scenes of Henry IV, and what is removed from the well known battle speeches