Henry V (1989)

User Rating:

7.9/10   

Director:

Kenneth Branagh

Writers:

William Shakespeare (play)
Kenneth Branagh (adaptation)

Release Date:

8 November 1989 (USA)

Genre:

Action | Drama | History | Romance | War

Tagline:

The great adventure of a king who defied the odds to prove himself a man.

Plot:

The gritty adaption of William Shakespeare's play about the English King's bloody conquest of France.

Plot Keywords:

King | France | Battle | England | King Of France

Awards:

Won Oscar. Another 9 wins & 7 nominations

Cast

Derek Jacobi	...	Chorus
Kenneth Branagh	...	Henry V
Simon Shepherd	...	Gloucester
James Larkin	...	Bedford
Brian Blessed	...	Exeter
James Simmons	...	York
Charles Kay	...	Canterbury
Alec McCowen	...	Ely
Fabian Cartwright	...	Cambridge
Stephen Simms	...	Scroop
Jay Villiers	...	Grey
Edward Jewesbury	...	Erpingham
Ian Holm	...	Fluellen
Danny Webb	...	Gower (as Daniel Webb)
Jimmy Yuill	...	Jamy

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for a bloody battle.

Runtime:

137 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English | French

Colour:

Colour (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Iceland:12 | Netherlands:16 | South Korea:12 | Brazil:Livre | Argentina:13 | Australia:PG | Chile:14 | Germany:12 | Singapore:PG | Sweden:11 | UK:PG | USA:PG-13 | West Germany:12

Filming Locations:

Crowlink, East Sussex, England, UK

Company:

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)

Trivia:

In this version, Branagh has Montjoy, the French herald, bring in the reports of the dead. In the play, this is done by an English herald. This action highlights the increasing civility towards King Henry that is shown in Montjoy and the French nobles and princes alike.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: One of the "dead" soldiers lying in the field after a battle winks.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Chorus: O! for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention; A kingdom for a stage, princes to act and monarchs to behold the swelling scene. Then should the war-like Harry, like himself, assume the port of Mars; and at his heels, Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire crouch for employment.

Movie Connections:

Featured in CinéMagique (2002)

Mastepiece

This film is a chef d'oeuvre, masterpiece, magnum opus, perfection. The battle scenes are exquisite, the soundtrack is spectacular. Mud & blood, sweat & tears, man & horse, all become one powerful force on the field of Agincourt.

Branagh, and the people he surrounds himself with, breathe life into Shakespeare's words.

When you watch Branagh, as Henry, deliver the Feast Of St. Crispian's Day speech to his weary band of brothers, you will be swept up in his passion, and find yourself cheering "let us fight" at your TV screen.

Branagh speaks the language of Shakespeare fluidly, naturally. It is the greatest language he knows, and upon entering his world, you too will know the glory of Shakespeare.

Non nobis domine, domine Non nobis domine Sed nomini, sed nomini Tu lauda gloriam

"O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention! A kingdom for a stage, princes to act, And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!"

"And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by, From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remember'd; We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother"

I love Branagh's Henry V because he incorporated all of Henry V's traits - the roguishly witty Prince Hal, the warmonger, the imperialist, the opportunist, the master rhetorician, the man with a miraculous ability to reason in divinity and to debate in commonwealth affairs and to exhibit military prowess, his piety, his administrative sagacity, political cunning, arrogance, his cruelty, his affability, all in all Branagh masterfully wears all the masks of Prince Hal/Henry V that Shakespeare created.

I love Branagh's version because he recreated as much as he could of the play and transformed it into an artistic cinematic presentation (the set designs and that battle sequence at Agincourt and the rich deep hues of burgundy and brown and sumptuous plums) instead of a staged presentation, because he remained true to Shakespeare's ambivalence towards Henry by allowing viewers to be critical of Henry's choices, he preserved most of the dialogue and presented the scenes in order, because of Branagh's unparalleled recitation of Shakespearean dialogue, and because of Patrick Doyle's rapturous, Proustian music which transports listeners to a paradoxical state of paradisial elysium and infernal, torturous pain, evoking times and places and battles and lives long forgotten, a remembrance of things past, a memories forever faded into royal genealogical charts and myths and legends.

The play is theatrically limited because the events in the play cannot be adequately represented on stage, which is one reason why Henry V is ironically one of the most theatrically expressive plays to perform - the production crew is forced to transcend theatrical convention in order to faithfully represent the play.

Theatre depends on synecdoche, meaning that what is presented on stage only represents part of the whole, and this is because of theatrical restrictions. What we watch is a shadow or illusion of the whole.

In Henry V, Shakespeare expected the audience to actively participate in the re-enactment of the events being staged.

Shakespeare addresses this throughout the Prologue and Chorus of the play, by constantly apologizing about the inadequate, confining medium being used to portray the spectacle before us.

Henry V is the crowning achievement of his Henriad (which spans from Richard II to Richard III) and of the English history play in general, and it is grandiosely resplendent with thousands of men and horses, full-rigged ships, the English fleet leaving Southampton and traversing the English Channel, and the brutal sacking of an entire town whose sacking is explicitly described in the dialogue - the firing of cannons, scaling ladders, town walls that must be physically breached on stage, characters that appear on the walls looking down at the siege, the town reduced to rubble, and the King boaring through the town with a massive army to make an extravagantly celebratory and unchallenged exit through the gates (is there any room on state for a set of gates?) of Harfleur.

Thank you Branagh for enriching our imaginations.