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HBO:
This is your fifth adaptation of Shakespeare.
What inspired your choice of setting and
period?
Kenneth Branagh:
When you make a film of a subject that
existed in another medium - particularly in
the theatre, where it's worked as a play for
four hundred years - I think one is obliged to
consider what the cinema can do to reveal the
story of the play that the theatre can't do in
the same way. I'm not suggesting one is
better than the other, but simply, what can
the medium do? Why do it in the cinema?
And, for me, the answer became about the
elements of the story that my experience of
doing the play in the theatre seemed to hint at
and which might be brought out in the
cinema in a different way. So I talk about
things like the disputes between brothers,
between Orlando and Oliver, between Duke
Senior and Duke Frederick.
I began with the prospect of bringing the
palace coup -- the overthrow of Duke Senior
by his so-called evil brother, Duke Frederick -
right at the front of the story - something
that's impossible to do in the theatre in the
same way. So that in the cinema we would
start that way and continue all the way
through so that the story could have
underneath it what the play also contains,
which is a sense of danger.
I wanted to put it in a potentially violent place
but also in a place that addressed the other
themes within the play, which are the notion
of romantic love - boy meets girl. I wanted
that to happen in a place that would be
romantic in the way that Shakespeare
comedies seem to require.
And the play also talks about the tension, if
you like, between town and country, between
busy lives in the city and the desire to be
simple in the outside world.
I found that all of those desires to explore
more explicitly in cinema themes that were in
the play were answered for me by the idea of
taking it away from the conventional English
glades, and go to Japan where in the second
half of the 19th Century - from about 1850 to
1900 roughly speaking - there was a moment
where Japan was trying to become an
industrial nation from an agricultural one.
They opened up a country that had
been very closed off, and invited people to
come and trade. And so they did, including
many English people who set up in these
treaty ports around the coasts where they
produced these sort of mini-empires. They
brought their families and some of them went
native. And so a Duke Frederick, a Duke
Senior borrowed from the Japanese. And the
landscape became something that was very
different and magical and mysterious to them
and to us.
And so from a trip to Japan - my very first, in
1990, the idea of a film that sets itself in what
I would call an impression of Japan or what
the opening haiku that we have on the screen
right at the beginning refers to as a 'dream of
Japan' could be a way to evoke in a refreshing
and hopefully an original way this ensemble of
characters rushing from the court into the
forest and eventually back to the court.
HBO:
What is the play's enduring appeal? Why do
artists and audiences keep coming back to
Shakespeare and As You Like It?
Kenneth Branagh:
It's a good question because it's a question we
always have to ask, because it needs to
continue to speak to us and not just
something that we ought to do because it's
good for us. It's far, far, far, far, far beyond
that. As You Like It has retained its place in
one you might call the top ten of most
performed Shakespeare plays - right up there
with Hamlet and Midsummer Night's Dream
and Romeo and Juliet. And it is so for a
number of reasons. It has a sort of deliciously
frivolous quality.
The title As You Like It has an almost casual
sort of shrug of the shoulders quality as if
Shakespeare were saying, Well, let it be
whatever you want it to be.
And I think that's a clue because on one level
the most memorable things about As You Like
It is Rosalind, who is the sort of epitome of
youthful adolescent passion. It's the story of a
first love -- and a first love which she is
playful with, passionate about, dramatic
about, deceitful about, deceptive about - all of
the things that, in fact, involve anybody if
they're involved in the process of being in
love.
Added into that mix is tremendous
intelligence and wit and an emotional
capacity. Alongside this are these surprising
parts of the story where it seems in a way that
I find delightful - Shakespeare seemed to be
writing about different things.
He starts off talking about disputes between
brothers, a passionate disagreement between
Oliver and Orlando then the overthrow of
Duke Senior by his brother Duke Frederick.
By the time we get to three/quarters of the
way through the story they're in a forest
which is beautiful but often described as a
desert place and where one of the characters,
Orlando, is attacked by a lion.
Shakespeare seems to run from one to the
other. Suddenly it's a story about fraternal
frictions and a family drama. Then he goes to
beautiful and silly romance. And I think all of
these themes and this mix of observation is
delivered lightly and allows the audience, as
the title suggests, to view it in any number of
ways.
HBO:
What is your approach to working with a cast
as fine and accomplished as this one?
Kenneth Branagh:
I think the cast responds to what they know
to be a common feature in the Shakespeare
films I've made, which is the attempt to have
the dialogue -- the prose and poetry --
delivered as naturally as possible and at the
same time, as clearly as possible. Trying to
find the balance between what you might call
the traditional and the contemporary. I
always want an improvised quality from the
actors. And I think it's the art that hides the
art that is very attractive to me.
So to give a specific example, someone who is
hugely experienced in that - Kevin Kline, who,
who brings this wealth of experience in
Shakespeare, he has this great technical skill
- the ability for it to seem natural, as if he's
only just thought of it, and for the artifice of
four hundred year old language not to be in
the play. So a very high skill level combined
with huge intelligence, imagination - in his
case, and for this particular role, a sort of
disposition which very funny people have -
and Kevin is certainly one of those. So he was
up for the challenge of making the acting
seem seamless, even though Shakespeare can
often lead actors into seeming rather false and
showy-offy and rather theatrical. Everybody
rose to that challenge.
What I really enjoyed this time was spending
individual time with each of the actors and
sort of creating the ensemble. We had one
magical evening on location in the heart of the
Sussex countryside, surrounded by wonderful
Asian plants and flora and fauna - where, as
the sun went down and we lit bonfires at the
end of a beautiful spring evening, and we read
the play out loud like a radio play.
And it was a magical, magical evening where
it was extraordinary to see someone like Kevin
Kline - of extraordinary experience, and quite
frankly, a star emerging before our very eyes
in the way that Bryce Dallas Howard met
Rosalind.
I felt as though I was watching Shakespeare
across the generations and in a new medium -
- sort of waving the flag and saying, We're not
telling you this is better than anything you'll
ever see but we think it's wonderful. What do
you think of it for a new generation? And
being part of that with that group of actors
was a very exciting thing.
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HBO Store
As You Like It DVD Starring Bryce Dallas Howard and Alfred Molina. Shop Now!
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