BRANAGH BRINGS DEPTH
Even amid a glut of remakes, director takes on the task of exploring the fractured soul
At first glance, the just-released Murder on the Orient Express could be seen as an expression of Hollywood’s deep malaise. Since it’s a nearly-century-old piece of intellectual property adapted for various screens on various occasions and features one of the best-known murder mysteries and murder mystery solutions, one would be excused for thinking yet another adaptation would offer little more than luscious set design and stunt casting.
The 2017 edition does have all that: The set design practically drips with Old World glamour. Stars include Johnny Depp, Daisy Ridley and Michelle Pfeiffer.
But thanks to Kenneth Branagh, who plays worldfamous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot in addition to handling directing duties, the new Orient Express has more to offer than pretty faces. Branagh, best known for his Shakespearean adaptations, is appropriately jaunty with the merry and unflappable Poirot while also endowing the crime-solving Belgian with a greater philosophical heft than previous iterations have.
Poirot is precise to the point of preciousness: He wishes for his eggs at breakfast to be the same size. If he steps in a pile of excrement with one shoe, he repeats the action with the other in order, he says, to maintain balance. Here is a man of order, a man whose world makes sense: “There is right, there is wrong, and there is nothing in between,” Poirot says by way of explaining why he is so keenly aware of when someone is lying to him.
His travel on the Orient Express shall challenge that belief. After Ratchett is found dead, stabbed repeatedly in his sleeper cabin, Poirot must determine who on the train did the deed. As the day progresses on the train, which has derailed in a snowstorm, Poirot comes to learn that Ratchett is actually named Cassetti — a gangster involved in the murder of a twoyear-old girl born to a wealthy U.S.-British family — and that everyone on the train had some relationship to the victimized family.
But where the book treats the solution as merely a clever twist, Branagh treats the killing as a rather disturbing fracturing of the human soul.
We see it in the way Branagh frames his shots. The camera often looks through the train’s beautiful bevelled glass in a manner that shows the faces of Poirot’s interview subjects in triplicate, suggesting souls torn asunder by the horrifying nature of Cassetti’s crime — and also their own brokenness, their own split with humanity.
But Branagh suggests it is Poirot himself who is most affected by the killing of the girl and her murderer. Branagh brings all the powers of the Shakespearean stage to bear on this quirky little man who believes in black and white yet is forced to admit that shades of grey are real: A photo of a departed loved one serves as Yorick, giving him space to monologue; his eyes tear as he works through the horrifying solution, betraying sorrow and rage all at once; he slumps slightly as he makes his decision, physically breaking down.
Branagh is so good that you can practically see a little piece of Poirot die as he determines that justice demands these liars, these killers, be set free.
In the book, the crime itself feels like a game to be won. “Having placed my solution before you, I have the honour to retire from the case” is Poirot’s closing line. You imagine him taking a sprightly little step as he twirls his moustache and walks off into the distance.
The film is far weightier, with Branagh’s Poirot stooped, humbled and a little bit broken as the credits roll. The murder on his Orient Express was no mere puzzle.
No, it was a tragedy in the classical sense — one compounded many times over.