Ken Branagh is a born storyteller.
He spins a good yarn.
Like a lot of directors here, I have a list of actors I've always wanted to work with.
And like a lot of directors here, because of my own insecurities, there aren't many
director/actors on that list.
Ken Branagh is different.
When I saw Henry V and I saw Dead Again, I saw somebody who was equally in love with
Shakespeare as with film noir.
And the figure he was most often compared to in the early days was Sir Lawrence Olivier,
who bridged stage to screen.
But in truth for me, the connection was more with Orson Welles, because Kenneth Branagh
to me is a born showman.
He's a storyteller who understands that anything can be a tool for storytelling.
His own presence, his own body, his own charisma, the camera, sound, light,
all of these things coming together.
There's no snobbery in what he does, no preference for theatre as opposed to film.
And so, for me, he's always somebody I wanted to connect with in some way as a storyteller,
and I recently had the pleasure of doing so.
I've seen Ken asked in the press, in regards to his new film, Murder on the Orient Express,
as to whether he was inspired to shoot on large format film because of his experience on my film.
And in fact, the reverse is true.
Because in the 90s, Ken Branagh somehow managed to convince our friends at Castlerock, Martin
Schaeffer, Alan Horn, Rob Reiner, that it was practically their civic duty to shoot
the entire Hamlet, unabridged, on 65 millimeter film.
And that's a film that, like so many of you here, I took such great pleasure
in pretending to have seen.
[Laughter]
But seriously folks, having watched it actually very recently, I can tell you
his Hamlet is one of the most aggressively communicative readings of that role
that you'll ever see.
It comes from a place of psychological truth, as do all the performances he gives.
But he understands that we don't all understand the language.
And he desperately wants us to understand that language.
He's like that middle school teacher who tried to convince you that you could do algebra,
that it would be fun if you could figure it out.
And somehow, his enthusiasm for that, he manages to draw you in the inner lives of these characters
and take you on that journey.
And the film is an extraordinary accomplishment, as does so many of the things that Ken has done.
When I had the pleasure of involving him in something I wanted to do, it was really wonderful
and inspiring to have him come to my home and sit with me, and tell me gently
that I had this ambition to tell the story with very little dialogue, but one of the most important
moments in the film maybe needed a little something more; maybe needed his character
to say a little something.
And this wasn't, you know, an actor just trying to squeeze a juicy line out of a writer/director,
this was a storyteller really trying to connect with another storyteller, and try and help
me do what I was trying to do but more so.
Trying to fill in the blanks.
And what he suggested, and pushed me to write- once again, a bit like a teacher who knows
the answer, but lets you sort of work it out for yourself- he drew me to what became one
of my favorite moments in the film.
It was one of my favorite moments in the script, and I was relishing shooting this moment.
And it's the moment where Ken's character sees the little ships coming over to help
with the evacuation at Dunkirk, and I took such pleasure in filming that out on the end
of this structure, out on the middle of the channel on a blustery day, and getting a 65
millimeter camera and just pushing in on that incredible face, and really hearing, I didn't
give him a line, I didn't give him one word, but he didn't complain.
And for me, it was a very moving thing for me to be a part of, and a moving thing to
have been involved with.