2023-09-14 22:04:22
The plan was that Murder on the Orient Express was a celebration of star system of Hollywood, not his will. However, the all-star cast that Kenneth Branagh had assembled for this Agatha Christie adaptation (similar to the one Sidney Lumet recruited in the ’70s) ended up conjuring a swan song, paying homage to the times when famous faces could bring to life people to the rooms without the private lives of said faces breaking into the public gallery in a disturbing way. Among the names of Penélope Cruz or Michelle Pfeiffer, Johnny Depp stood out, for playing the murdered man.
Shortly after Murder on the Orient Express, Depp would find himself involved in an extremely high-profile trial with Amber Heard. Meanwhile, the film had made enough money for 20th Century Fox (in its last years before being absorbed by Disney) to encourage Branagh to make a sequel, which could not be traced back to another story that Death on the Nile. This sequel did have to deal beautifully with industrial changes: beyond the fact that the pandemic emergency delayed its release date multiple times —Death on the Nile It was filmed in 2019, but did not see the light of day until early 2022—a good part of its big names suddenly appeared bathed in controversy.
The presence of Gal Gadot (a proud Israeli citizen) led to the film’s ban in Lebanon and Kuwait. In the midst of the pandemic crisis, Letitia Wright and Russell Brand proclaimed their anti-vaccine and conspiracy beliefs. As if that were not enough, rumors of Armie Hammer’s cannibalism were combined with accusations of sexual abuse. Death on the Nile It was finally released, with hardly any other godfather during the promotion than Branagh himself. The arrival of Death on the Nile —also coinciding with the season that its director was chasing the Oscar with Belfast—, perhaps all this explains why Mystery in Venice It has a wealth of stars that are on the discreet side.
Hercule Poirot in the center
Another reason why Murder on the Orient Express y Death on the Nile may seem out of date today is its proximity to another detective diptych: the Daggers in the back by Rian Johnson. Daniel Craig’s detective Benoit Blanc is as neurotic as Poirot, but his cases provide a clear bridge to the present and show a certain sociopolitical concern, while playing with the conventions of the genre. It’s not something Branagh is interested in at all. Throughout his films he has wanted to invoke an old quality, of “lifetime” cinema, which should guarantee his stars.
This, more or less, has evaporated with Mystery in Venice. Of course Michelle Yeoh is a star — and she also shot the film at the same time as winning the Oscar for Everything at once everywhere—, but outside of this exception the cast seems to have been constructed for Branagh’s comfort. It would explain the reappearance of Jamie Dornan and Jude Hill as father and son after Belfast —where Hill played the child version of Branagh himself thanks to the magic of autofiction—, while the signing of the writer and comedian Tina Fey would give a picturesque aspect to the proposal, but in no way glamorous.
The point is that stripping Christie’s adaptations of the industrial showcase doesn’t go against Branagh’s goals. Aside from all of the above, if his Poirot films stand out for something, it is for the attention paid to building the protagonist, giving him a tragic aura that does not exclude self-parody but marking distance from the detectives that Albert Finney and Peter Ustinov once played. , marked by an eminently choral setting. This is how Christie arranged it: Poirot was always one of many characters in his intrigues, who towards the end had to stand as omnipotent judge.
Faced with this image, Branagh (along with screenwriter Michael Bacall) has preferred to delve into his past, give him an old romantic relationship that defines him years later and even add a trauma related to his iconic mustache. The maneuver came together Death on the Nile, to the point that the entire mystery was narratively and thematically folded into Poirot’s meditative suffering. Branagh managed to truly transcend Christie’s written work, combining absolute respect for the source with an air of luxurious decadence and romanticism, which could anticipate a new and promising phase for Poirot.
There were reasons, then, to look forward to Mystery in Venice. Branagh, who has always been a religiously faithful adapter—even his most creaky, Frankenstein de Mary Shelleywere less so because of betrayal than because of the same excess of enthusiasm that permeates his numerous adaptations of William Shakespeare -, pointed out that he had given himself a letter of marque after Death on the Nile. Now he could experiment with Poirot for real, make the character his own, and keep Christie relevant today without the need for style revisions. Daggers in the back.
The approach of Mystery in Venice guaranteed that this would be the case, because there is no Christie novel titled Mystery in Venice. Branagh and Bacall are now adapting a late and little-known novel starring Poirot, originally titled Hallowe’en Party and published in 1969. In Spain we know it as The apples, and the plot takes us to a children’s Halloween party where a girl has turned up dead in a barrel full of apples. It stands out for being one of the stories where Poirot fraternizes with a character especially loved by Christie fans: Ariadne Oliver.
Ariadne Oliver is a mystery novelist who is a friend of Poirot. Christie conceived her as an alter ego through which to wink at fans—through Oliver, for example, she drew a connection between Poirot and Miss Marple—and laugh at herself. In Mystery in Venice She is played by Fey, in what is the great discovery of the film thanks to her relationship with Poirot, and the joint investigation they carry out when the time comes. However, the freedom of approach Mystery in Venice —notorious from the fact that the original novel was set in England—does not guarantee that the film equals the benefits of Death on the Nile. Not even wanting to transform itself, out of the blue, into a horror movie.
Venetian spiritualism
Mystery in Venice once again places Poirot as the total protagonist. It is set in 1947, when the Belgian detective is enjoying a well-deserved retirement among Venetian canals, and the character of Fey appears to disturb his rest. Shortly after, he is involved in a seance that seeks to contact the spirit of the murdered girl, and said session is assaulted by a series of events that defy the detective’s logic, determined that there is a scientific explanation for everything that happened. is happening.
As a director, Branagh has always had a complicated temperament. Although it is commendable how each film—regardless of whether we are talking about assignments like Artemis Fowl o Thor—, the British strive to make unexpected decisions and overload the formal apparatus, it is still true that he often falls into a rather unpleasant hysteria, which perhaps would have been encountered with a summit in Belfast. Murder on the Orient Express y Death on the Nile They would be fortunate examples, where Branagh’s excited camera would manage to underline their baroque style.
What happens with Mystery in Venice? That Branagh stays halfway. On the one hand, Venice is a very suggestive location when it comes to wrapping its corners in the unknown – Nicolas Roeg was already able to discover it before him with Threat in the shadows o Paul Schrader con The pleasure of strangers—, but the director prefers to enhance it with a wonderful cinematography by Hans Zambarloukos rather than take advantage of its terrifying possibilities. During most of the tight footage of him, Mystery in Venice It takes place in a closed mansion, where, as usual, characters will die so that Poirot has to eliminate suspects against the clock.
Said mansion is visualized with the expected arsenal of aberrant angles and sequence shots, with greater imagination than that used when startling the inhabitants through the supposed appearance of spirits. In this case, Branagh’s staging is diluted into a festival of jumpscares leftovers from any delivery of Warren expedient, without any capacity to infect the protagonists’ state of agitation due to its noisy predictability. The terror of Mystery in Venice It turns out to be, in short, just a claim for the trailers to sell a film more distinctive than it really is.
It wouldn’t be too annoying if Mystery in Venice show some new aspect of Poirot. The side of him as a melancholic lover, which worked so well in Death on the Nile, here gives way to the tensions of a man in the twilight of his life who thinks about retreat while refusing to believe in something he has not already seen: an approach that is only allowed to shine occasionally thanks to the contrast with the character by Fey. We don’t learn anything about Poirot that we didn’t already know, which becomes more serious the more it becomes clear that this case lacks the sophistication of the previous ones. Mystery in Venice It is a relic, as they were Murder on the Orient Express y Death on the Nile. But, unlike these, it does not have any shine that encourages us to shake off the dust.
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