Branagh Does It Again

Rating: 9/10 (10 November 2017)

The famous detective Hercule Poirot boards the Orient Express in Constantinople on a journey back to London. It is an iron rule of the detective genre that wherever a famous detective goes murder will follow in his or her footsteps, and so it proves here. While the train is passing through Yugoslavia one of the passengers, Edward Ratchett, is found stabbed to death. At first sight there seems to be an obvious solution to the crime. Ratchett was a dodgy antiques dealer, and had recently cheated some Italian gangsters by selling them bogus goods. As Poirot investigates, however, he begins to have his doubts as to whether this was the true motive for the murder. Several of the passengers, although they are of various different nationalities and belong to different social classes, seem to have links to the notorious Armstrong murder case. (A fictionalised version of the real-life Lindbergh baby case). Moreover, Ratchett himself may also have had something to do with that case.
It is, or seems to be, an iron rule of all cinematic genres that wherever Kenneth Branagh goes success will follow in his footsteps. (OK, forget the dreadful "Wild, Wild West"). He began his career with an adaptation of Shakespeare's "Henry V" which can stand comparison with Olivier's and has since developed into Britain's greatest actor/director of recent years. In the nineties he directed and starred in what I regard as the best-ever adaptation of a Shakespeare comedy, "Much Ado about Nothing" and the best-ever adaptation of a Shakespeare tragedy, "Hamlet". His talents are not confined to Shakespeare. As director he was responsible for films as good as "Peter's Friends", "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein" and "Cinderella". He has also acted in a number of other excellent films, including "Othello", "Rabbit-Proof Fence", "Valkyrie" and the recent "Dunkirk".
And now Branagh has done it again. He has turned his attention to Agatha Christie and, characteristically, the result is probably the best-ever Christie adaptation, better than any of the entries in the great Christie cycle of the seventies and eighties. As so often before, Branagh is both the film's director and its star. His Poirot is a re-invention of the character, rather different from the dapper little man played by David Suchet in the television series. That luxuriant moustache would perhaps be more appropriate to the late Victorian or Edwardian periods than to the 1930s- gentlemen in the inter-war years were generally either clean shaven or sported a small, neatly trimmed moustache- but Branagh may have adopted it as a way of distinguishing his character from Suchet's.
Poirot is normally thought of as a supremely rational individual who can solve any crime by the exercise of his "little grey cells" alone. (The phrase "little grey cells" has become as closely associated with Poirot as "Elementary, my dear Watson" with Sherlock Holmes). In Branagh's characterisation, however, he emerges as something more than a mere human calculating machine. He is not merely rational but also humane and compassionate, a man whose abilities as a detective owe as much to an empathetic understanding of human nature as they do to pure reason and who realises that, as La Rochefoucauld said, the heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing. The story's famous twist ending probably does not surprise him as much as it surprises us. He is also wise enough to realise that justice, in the true sense, does not always require punishment.
The supporting cast includes some big names including the likes of Penélope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, Judi Dench, Johnny Depp, Derek Jacobi and Michelle Pfeiffer. All play their roles well, but because, Branagh himself apart, this is very much an ensemble effort, it would be difficult to single any of them out for special praise.
The action takes place in winter and the main drama- the crime and Poirot's investigation- takes place after the tracks have been blocked by an avalanche in the mountains. The train is halted atop a lofty trestle bridge, a wonderful piece of engineering yet at the same time looking flimsy and insecure. This setting enables Branagh to give his film a wonderful visual look, with the stark monochrome mountain scenery contrasting with the opulent luxury on board the train, but (in my view at least) it is also loaded with metaphorical meaning. The idea of a train (or ship, or coach, or bus) as a microcosm of human society is hardly an original one, but here Branagh seems to give it extra meaning. Our civilisation, with all its opulent luxury is supported by structures which are wonderfully engineered yet at the same time flimsy and insecure, even though they are all that stand between us and a plunge into the abyss.
I said earlier that this is probably the best-ever Christie adaptation. I'd go further. It's probably the best-ever cinematic whodunit. Branagh may, however, have a chance to surpass himself in this respect. At the end of the film we hear that Poirot has been called away to a case in Egypt. Does this mean that Branagh is planning his own version of "Death on the Nile"? 9/10