Day 15: “As You Like It” – And You Might, You Might Not

Film 15: “As You Like It” (2006)

Adapted By Kenneth Branagh from William Shakespeare’s play
Directed by Kenneth Branagh

So pretty, so colorful, so full of professional performances – why doesn’t it move me more?

First, you ought to know how hard it is for me to say anything negative about Kenneth Branagh – the Northern Irish actor of the Golden Tongue. I took the hour long bus ride four weeks running at college, just to watch Branagh’s freshman effort “Henry V” again and again and sigh. Nobody in this generation can speak it like the Branagh, baby.

Still supremely in control of his instrument whenever he’s onstage, Branagh hits and misses onscreen. 1993’s “Much Ado About Nothing” – one of the funniest straight-forward adaptations ever. 2000’s “Love’s Labours Lost” – 1930’s musical-style – lost on mainstream audiences and certainly studio heads – featured great goofy moments interspersed with bizarrely out-of-tune crescendos.

Here, he sets the gender-bending comedy in feudal Japan – with only a smattering of Japanese actors, all in minor roles. I’ll admit it took me an hour of film to understand that the Irish, English, American and African faces that people the cast are all supposed to be Japanese, versus visitors in the exotic landscape. I imagine the idea was to set the play in a land where ‘banishment’ might be easier to understand, but since the characters still find themselves in a lush, green forest, it’s hard to see any big impact of this move.

But I think what’s harder to access is the languorous pacing, half of it filled with dramatic, woeful music and crying actors. Hard to get onboard with the comedy idea when all the performers seem so melancholic. Branagh does love Shakespeare’s dialogue and has always taken great efforts to make sure we do too. Here he does us that courtesy with long takes, giving us time to process the thick language and double meanings. Unfortunately, it completely ruins any comic timing the film as a whole might have. There are lovely small moments throughout, but the wide, open spaces between them interrupt the overall effort.

If you’re a big fan of this play (admittedly, I’m not), or of Branagh, or supremely gifted actors like Kevin Kline, Bryce Dallas Howard, Alfred Molina, Janet McTeer and Adrian Lester, you should definitely try this out. Make your own judgment. I feel like this is the kind of movie that will produce as many different opinions as it has viewers.