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'Henry V' : Rated PG
By Desson Howe
Washington Post Staff Writer
December 15, 1989
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THE MODERN yup attire, the less-than-kingly height, and the fact that he's padding the carpet of a neo-luxury suite in decidedly unregal Washington make it hard to see the king in Kenneth Branagh. But edge closer to the puckish, Irish face, the warmly resolute voice of this 20th-century commoner (also soccer fan, father and cofounder of Britain's Renaissance Theatre Company) and you'll see the screen king of "Henry V" emerge.You'll also see the adaptor/director who: 1) believed a Shakespeare film (already "done" by Sir Laurence Olivier) starring an unknown (himself) could succeed in this numbskull age of "My Stepmother Is an Alien," and 2) convinced investors, over an 18-month hustling period, that he wasn't crazy. "Actually, the film seems to be crossing over class barriers withwhich in England we're riddled," says Branagh, who reports receiving cockney-accented on-the-street compliments back home. "I want to make people respond to this as a film and not as if they'd gone to church." There's resistance, however, at every turn: When Branagh the triumphant son invited Mum and Dad to the London premiere, he received the class-conscious reply, "We can't see it son, we wouldn't understand." How this art-for-the-masses experiment (not to mention Franco "Romeo and Juliet" Zeffirelli's upcoming "Hamlet," starring Mel Gibson) fares in the New World remains to be seen; whatever happens, Branagh intends to avoid Shakespeare for his next project. But should "Henry" prove its valor at the box-office, a movie version of "Much Ado About Nothing," says Branagh, "is something I quite fancy."
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