POIROT DELIGHTS WITH PANACHE & MOUSTACHE. MARSH,
BRANAGH’S MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS A DAZZLING DISPLAY OF ENTHUSIASM
Agatha Christie preferred composing mysteries to sentences. The Queen of Crime’s scenarios, bristling with murderous intrigue, were paragons of scrupulousness: no stray detail escaped her attention, no errant remark eluded the rigour of her design. But when it came to prose the authoress rather wanted for style. “Hercule Poirot lay awake staring at the ceiling,” Christie writes in Murder on the Orient Express. “He had forgotten to ask for his usual bottle of mineral water. He looked at his watch again. Just after a quarter- past one. He would ring for the conductor and ask him for some mineral water.”
Marcel Proust this is not. Christie availed herself of the English language merely as the means to shape a rousing tale. But the success of a movie derived from a novel tends to bear an inverse relationship to the quality of the material adapted — in other words, badly written books often make good films. “As a rule, the better the prose in the novel, the less likely that a successful film will be made of it,” Martin Amis has said. “You really want something that’s written like The Godfather, where the prose is nothing much, but a great director can re- imagine it with the power of someone like Nabokov.”
It may be something of a stretch to call Kenneth Branagh a great director, at least by the standard of Nabokovian power. But in Christie’s story of violence and conspiracy aboard a stationary locomotive he has found adaptable fodder. Murder fairly is a gripping yarn, and Branagh has fun re-imagining it for the screen.
The f un begins with t he screen’s prodigious size: like his adaptation of Hamlet from 1996, and like Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, in which he appeared as an actor earlier this year, Murder on the Orient Express was shot using 65mm film cameras and is intended to be enjoyed on colossal IMAX scale. Dunkirk used the format to capture the immensity of the production, but Murder was mounted in studio warehouses, in cozy prefab railway carriages and before manipulable lime-green walls. What you get — and get with mammoth breadth — are expensive- looking costumes and lavishly adorned firstclass- cabin sets. In this way the film belies the outward appearance of a blockbuster — instead suggesting a more prestigious affinity with the Panavision roadshow pictures of the 1960s.
Christie’s novel, for all its labyrinthine plotting, remains quite inert dramatically. Its action consists almost exclusively of mild one- on- one interrogations between the clever Poirot and the crime scene’s unvaryingly duplicitous suspects, during the course of which, again and again throughout the novel, questions are duly posed, falsehoods are summarily revealed, and the plot, as they say, increasingly thickens. Branagh’s film, adapted by Blade Runner 2049 screenwriter Michael Green, is altogether faithful to the original mystery and how its secrets transpire from scene to scene — to the point, and I suppose this constitutes a spoiler for some, that the solution is replicated to the letter. But the affair of the Armstrong kidnapping and its reverberations is a compelling one. Given the intricacy of the ruse, it was sensible for Branagh to retain it.
Branagh takes liberties everywhere else. He introduces the film with a self-contained prologue in Jerusalem, in which Poirot demonstrates his brilliance and panache while solving the robbery of a precious religious artifact by the head of the local police, and concludes with a coda teasing continuing Poirot adventures to come. He devises a chase on foot beneath the train, and a brief shootout meant to juice up the excitement. And wherever possible he allows himself and his fellow actors the privilege of theatrical vivacity: Christie’s prose may be drab, but Green’s dialogue sparkles.
Poirot of course has a rich history in film. He is a character beloved not only by audiences, but by actors — actors who sense in the role a rare opportunity for exuberance. As a director, Branagh seems amused by this material; he is obviously overjoyed starring as Poirot. “A ridiculous- looking little man,” Mary Debenham describes the famed Belgian detective with his “enormous moustaches” on the first pages of the novel — “the sort of little man one could never take seriously.” Branagh does not shy away from the characterization; those moustaches alone, plastered beneath his nose like the tusks of a walrus, defy the serious grandeur of the production. And yet at the same time he gives the part a faintly melancholic edge, sensitive to the real man lurking within the comic figure. It is a delightful performance, and if there is reason for a sequel it would be to see him reprise the role again.
Surrounding him on all sides are the constituents of an intimidating ensemble. This it shares with its predecessor of 1974 — whose marquee- crowding cast list included Vanessa Redgrave, Anthony Perkins, Sean Connery, Ingrid Bergman and Lauren Bacall, among other names of legendary esteem. Michelle Pfeiffer, Willem Dafoe, and Judi Dench may have some to equivalent contemporary repute: they are, whether used well or squandered here, luminaries enough to bathe the proceedings in highly sought prestige. Josh Gad, Daisy Ridley, and ( especially) Johnny Depp not so much. If what is meant to be aroused by the presence of almost uniformly famous faces is an impression of glamour, Branagh’s Orient Express manifest feels a little too meagre. Although perhaps that reflects more badly on the paltry state of the modern A-list than those on board this train.
If meticulousness was Christie’s virtue as an author, Branagh’s, as actor and director both, is enthusiasm. It infects every scene of Murder on the Orient Express, and is evident in every roving long take, sprightly line-reading and digitally enhanced sunset he commits with vigour to the screen. And while it is idle to suggest that this picture represents a style of filmmaking lately absent from the cinema — handsome, costly, self- consciously old-fashioned, but hardly so different from the latest superhero adventure — it is heartening to find Branagh afforded the means to realize a personal, idiosyncratic interpretation of this material, dazzling in scope but the product of care.
Christie wanted as a writer for style. Branagh wrests the story of the page with panache.