A star-studded murder mystery hits theaters
Director Kenneth Branagh talks about his new film, “Murder on the Orient Express.”
Kenneth Branagh was only 13 years old when he first read Agatha Christie’s “Murder on the Orient Express” but he still remembers the thrill of being riveted not only by the central mystery but by its crime-solving protagonist, Hercule Poirot.
More than 40 years later, when he was offered the chance to direct an all-star adaptation of the novel and star as Poirot, Branagh didn’t think twice about jumping onboard.
“I was [hooked] from the first page, the first chapter,” he notes. “It starts in Aleppo. Aleppo’s been in the news for all sorts of terrible reasons in the last couple years, and you think, ‘Christ, Agatha Christie actually went to Aleppo.’
“She actually travelled there. She was on the Tourist Express that took you to the boat [bound for] Istanbul. So, the book seemed to possess this kind of wild, pioneering spirit … ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ starts and it’s freezing and it’s 5 in the morning and Poirot is trying to get on the train. It gets very intriguing, very quickly.”
“Murder on the Orient Express” features an allstar cast including Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Daisy Ridley, Judi Dench, and Penelope Cruz.
In order to secure the services of so many A-listers, Branagh had to become a scheduling mastermind.
“It was a logistical challenge, there’s no question, because everybody says, ‘Oh, it’s so great, I’d love to do this. And, look, I’ve seen my part and it is probably only 10 days working.’
“Well, everybody can’t be there for just 10 days,
Kenneth Branagh and Daisy Ridley star in Twentieth Century Fox’s “Murder on the Orient Express.”
but the fun of it is, we got them to come and be on the train together. So, there was a month in the middle of the schedule where everybody was there, and on either side of that were 200 scenes. The key thing for me was to prepare months ahead. I was way, way ahead with preparations for what I had to do.”
After directing all-star adaptations of “Hamlet” and “Much Ado About Nothing” — not to mention “Thor” and “Cinderella” — Branagh is no stranger to telling movie stars what to do. But he says he particularly enjoyed working alongside his fellow “Orient Express” travelers.
“I was genuinely impressed by, at various levels, Daisy Ridley, for instance,” he says. “Right in the middle of this massive franchise [‘Star Wars’] she was very honest and humble about her lack of experience.
“She’s a real natural and not overwhelmed but not arrogant, either. I learned a lot from her because she’s so self-possessed. I was very impressed.
“Penelope Cruz is so experienced and such a worrier. She just worries
about it the whole time, and in a good way. Always full of questions, full of questions. Johnny Depp is so playful. His confidence around the camera is total. “With Michelle Pfeiffer, you get this kind of focus. She comes in, you don’t want to be making her wait. Not that she had any sort of diva-ish tendencies at all, but she’s so ready to go. I mean you just don’t call her until everything’s set.
“Clint Eastwood called [actors like Michelle] fast starters. He used to mention Gene Hackman. They know what they’re going to do. You want to be ready and capture it and then let them go, let them lie down.”
Through the years, many actors have played Poirot, most notably Albert Finney in Sidney Lumet’s 1974 movie adaptation and David Suchet in an enormously popular British TV series.
Branagh had specific ideas about how to make Poirot his own.
“I wanted him to have the potential to be shaken,” says the filmmaker. “We make him fairly fixed in his position at the beginning of the film: there is right, there is wrong, and there is nothing in between.
“He gets to the end and now he’s faced with a more human challenge of whether there is something in between right and wrong. ... You see a guy ... needing to shift from a position he’s always taken.
“He tries to control life. Get the eggs that are the right size and get the room numbers and everything and somehow the chaos of the world will still. That’s [how I played him] and that’s different from the little more coquettish [way he is sometimes played], which Christie also [includes in his character].”
For Branagh, one of the movie’s biggest challenges was finding just the right kind of elaborate mustache for Poirot.
“The mustache? It was six months of sculpting and also the crushing understanding that I didn’t have the follicle power to grow it myself,” he reports.
As to what became of the whiskers, Branagh says with a laugh, “It lives. There are several of them, actually, and they all have names.”