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
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
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