The three of us gave it a solid B+ — good acting, good filming, nice locations and costumes, bonus points for no flaming arrows. A decent piece of work.
But I'm left with a feeling of utter bafflement about why this movie was made. It seems to deliberately miss some key opportunities.
I can understand making another film of Shakespeare's plays about Henry IV and Henry V. They're great plays and have plenty of scope for cool stuff on the big screen. Orson Welles, Lawrence Olivier, and Kenneth Branagh have all taken a stab at the Henriad.
I can understand wanting to make a historically accurate biopic of Henry V, paring away the Shakespearian inventions to depict something close to the real man in his real times. That would be a fascinating film.
What I can't make myself understand is why one would make a heavily fictionalized version of Henry's accession to the throne and his campaigns in France, yet turn down the opportunity to use the language of the greatest playwright in the English language.
So we have drunken party-boy Hal slumming it in Eastcheap with his drunken pal old Sir John Falstaff. We have Hal fighting Hotspur in single combat. We have the Dauphin acting like Ming of Mongo — all from Shakespeare. The moviemakers even add some departures from reality of their own that Shakespeare never thought of. So we're not being rigorously accurate here.
But on the morning of the battle of Agincourt, when King Henry V has to make a speech to inspire his men, instead of using the "Saint Crispin's Day" speech from Shakespeare's play, instead the screenwriters have him holler at his men about how they're all about to die in order to unite England or some damned nonsense like that. You can almost see their morale dropping.
"Saint Crispin's Day" is a speech which would make even the most dyed-in-the-wool pacifist's heart race with patriotic fervor and a desire to thrash the nearest Frenchman. You can believe that Henry was a great leader if he could toss that off at his men and lead them to an incredibly lopsided victory over a powerful foe. Why not use it?
Once again I'm convinced that the tiny cog people have saved a misguided film from itself. The moviemakers made their incomprehensible choice, and made a movie which didn't need to be made. What saves it is the effort of the invisible multitude of costumers, set designers, historical advisors, armorers, and prop makers, who made it interesting to look at and reasonably authentic. They deserve all the credit.
*"Timothy Chalmette? Is he related to Harvey Marrero?"
It was made for a relatively modest sum ($23 million) for two purposes: To fill the ever-gaping maw of Netflix, and also to be potential Oscar bait. Netflix gave it a token theatrical release to satisfy the Academy requirements, and in a less good year (or had the movie done slightly better critically), it might have gotten a Best Actor and Best Cinematography nod. It was also probably made as a way for Netflix to stay in business with Brad Pitt, whose Plan B production company made this and War Machine (which Pitt starred in and which was also directed by Michod).
All of which is to say it was made for a number of reasons, none of which has much to do with the actual movie on the screen.
Posted by: John Scalzi | 11/27/2020 at 08:04 PM