The weight of the world may finally have been too much for Kenneth Branagh's not-so-broad shoulders. One of them has been thrown out, and as he sits down in the hotel room's wingback chair, he mutters a series of Anglo-Saxonisms that have nothing to do with his new movie, Hamlet, in which he is both star and director.
"Did you ever wake up and suddenly feel old?" asks the 35-year-old, "If I'm sitting here in an odd position while we talk, my shoulder's the reason. Do you mind if I smoke?"
Between grimaces and cigarettes, the sandy-haired, bearded Branagh, with his pie-shaped Jimmy Cagney face, chatted about his new, four-hour version of Hamlet (which opens in theatres in Toronto, New York and Los Angeles tomorrow before a wide release next month). As he talked, smoked, quoted chunks of Shakespeare and illustrated with his hands, his shoulder seemed temporarily forgotten. But before the end of a day, a chiropractor had to be called in to ease his discomfort.
For an actor who has done as much as anyone to bring Shakespeare to a mass audience, Branagh is utterly free of pretension or self-importance. A British critic once sniffed he had the upbeat can-do personality of a "club tennis pro." He has a legendary knack for getting along with people, from Prince Charles and Conan O'Brien to American comedians and British classical actors. His skills - apart, of course, from acting, writing and directing - are his charm and chutzpah.
His extroverted attitude informs his view of Shakespeare, who, he insists on reminding us, was once a popular entertainer.
"I think of myself as a populist, for lack of a better word. I hate the idea that people are too intellectually intimidated to approach Shakespeare. When I meet people on the street and they say, 'Hey, you're the Shakespeare guy, what play should I read?' I urge them not to try to read any of it but to go see my film. There are elements any modern audience would understand: murder, a lot of sex - soap-opera elements in a way."
Branagh has always said his energetic, outgoing personality comes from his working-class Belfast background. The middle of three children, Branagh is the son of a woodworker who moved to England in 1969 at the beginning of the sectarian strife in Ireland. A star student at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, he quickly established himself in British television and on stage. While still in his mid-20s, he shook up British theatre when he began his own classical company, Renaissance Theatre, in 1987. His international reputation was established in 1988, with his film debut as director and star in the Oscar-nominated Henry V, which earned him a place on the cover of Time magazine and comparisons to Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier.
To his credit, Branagh always rejected such comparisons. (He once described himself as "more of a tortured nut-case than a tortured genius.") Indeed, his film career, after Henry V, has been that of an ordinary talent oscillating between slight and charming movies (Much Ado About Nothing, Peter and His Friends [sic]) and interesting but overblown movies (Dead Again, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein). The British press turned nasty, suggesting his real talent was entrepreneurship and self-promotion.
The turning point came in 1994 when Branagh returned to the stage with the Royal Shakespeare Company to play Hamlet and earned the best reviews of his career ("the great Hamlet of our time," said the Daily Mail). The success of that production inspired him to begin raising funds for the film version.
Perhaps it's a reflection of Branagh's determined normalcy that he has resisted the gothic, morbid atmosphere often associated with Hamlet. His setting - with England's stately Blenheim Palace filling in for Elsinore - is almost glaringly bright. The 19th-century setting, suggestive of the last days of Russia's Romanov dynasty, emphasizes the intrigues and public politics of the royals. The atmosphere in the opening scene, set in the opulent court, is festive.
"There's nothing in the text that suggests that these people are manic-depressives," Branagh decided. "I see Elsinore as a place of thriving potential."
Even the marriage between Queen Gertrude and her brother-in-law, Claudius, "might have been a good thing, except, unforunately, Claudius killed Hamlet's father." Ophelia (played in the film by Kate Winslet) isn't depicted as "half-potty" to begin with but as a young woman involved in a full love affair with Hamlet. Her father Polonius (Richard Briers) is "not a doddering old fool, as he's frequently played," but both a loving father and a sly and dangerous man.
Mostly, Branagh wanted to dispel the clouds of morbidity around Hamlet himself. "The Hamlet that I've always envisioned isn't the melancholy Dane. He's curious, vibrant and intelligent. He's always been full of life to me: complex, bitter, violent, cruel, deeply funny and not mad, I think, but highly distressed."
Many of his decisions, Branagh said, came from his determination to perform the play without the usual extensive cuts. He decided the full text was important, both to expand the meaning of the play and to make it, paradoxically, easier to play. The experience of the more conventionally edited Hamlet "leaves you with a lot of intense set pieces, all close together, which is unnecessarily confining and difficult to play."
The extra scenes give the actor playing the Prince the occasional breather. But Branagh, who seldom seems to need a breather himself except to take a puff on a cigarette, filled his all-too-brief half-hour interview with many more words and thoughts on his favourite writer and role.
On what he brings to Shakespeare:
"A commitment to clarity, first of all. The emotional bedrock of the material is what I'm searching for, rather than a purely intellectual exercise. I don't claim to understand Hamlet, but I do have a very strong relationship to the play and the character. I have strong tastes but, in a sense, unspecific intentions. You want to release as much of the play as possible."
On the advantages of film as opposed to theatre:
"My problem with theatre is that it costs so much to go, and so few people see it. A film can travel the world and live for years. Even if it's not initially accepted, eventually it can find its audience.
"Also, in a film you can give more weight to characters than the text allows. Gertrude (Julie Christie) has less dialogue than the first gravedigger, but we've emphasized her importance to the story by putting the camera on her more, as well as with the illustrative flashbacks. When we add more to each character, we add more dimensions to Hamlet's character."
On his historical place in interpreting Shakespeare:
"I don't really think about any of that. I usually give a crass sort of answer: I made a couple of Shakespeare films that made money, so others got made. As far as the overall trend of Shakespeare films goes, I'm pleased I've had something to do with it, but the success of these films all points back to the author. I'm happy that films like Romeo and Juliet get made because they make it cool to go to Shakespeare, maybe even my Hamlet. "I enjoy getting letters from teachers who write to tell me about how they've used my films to introduce Shakespeare to students. The kids get it; they don't have to go through what I did when I was forced to read The Merchant of Venice at 13 or 14, and it made no sense."
On the increasing sophistication of young audiences:
"A doctor friend of mine has a 10-year-old daughter who saw Hamlet and she loved it, though she wanted me to know that if I had any hopes for this becoming a blockbuster, I was really going to have to change the ending."