The Hollow Crown etc
Jul. 23rd, 2012 03:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shapinglightSo, King Henry V has fangirls?
I can't tell you how tickled I am by this.
Seriously, though, I thought the play - in fact, all the plays in the BBC's Hollow Crown sequence - very well done...
....though unlike the others, I know Henry V well enough to realise when things have been left out.
Not that I've ever seen it on stage - only two previous film productions, the famous Lawrence Olivier one and the one with Kenneth Branagh. So, three very different portrayals of Henry V, of which I think Olivier's is probably the seminal one (for me, anyway), in that I can quite believe his Henry would invade France on such a specious pretext (an explanation of which was one of the bits missing from the latest BBC production) and would be cold and ruthless enough to carry the project through. I didn't care for Branagh's Henry, as I felt Branagh played him as pretty much the captain of the school rugby team (public school, of course, by which I mean private), or it may be that Branagh's looks just lend themselves to that interpretation, I don't know. Anyway, it's not a persona I find particularly attractive, though, conversely the only one of the three interpretations that doesn't make you think "Yeah, right," during the wooing scene when Henry describes himself to Princess Katherine as 'just a plain soldier.'
But anyway, yes, there were several scenes missed out of this latest version (should I call it the 'Loki' version? Perhaps not, that's doing Tom Hiddleston a vast disservice), including the 'if an Englishman, an Irishman, a Scotsman and a Welshman went into a bar' scene (originator of so many jokes), which was inevitable when the Englishman, Irishman and Scotsman hadn't been included in the cast. The king's brothers, as seen in Henry IV parts 1 & 2, were conspicuous by their absence too, though two of them are in the play (they don't do much, as I recall) and when I glanced through the text, I noticed there were three 'conspirators' mentioned, and I don't remember them from any version and have no idea what they were conspiring against.
Never mind, though. Really, this version was all about Tom Hiddleston's performance as the king, which I have to say I loved (for the record I loved Ben Whishaw's Richard II too, and Jeremy Irons's Henry IV). I suppose it was a very 'modern' performance, in that Hiddleston played Henry as consumed by self-doubt and anguish over the suffering his war had inflicted on his own men - a compassionate king, in fact, in tune with the common man, which gives his hobnobbing with the hoi polloi in the Henry IV plays context. He manages to give the impression that he'd deliberately set out to understand his people better by becoming one of them, which makes his rejection of poor old Falstaff a little less brutal (not that Hiddleston ever played it brutal, which it's perfectly possible to do), and also makes you feel he is genuinely regretful for what happened to Bardolph.
This doesn't always work to the production's advantage, though, as Henry's scene with, say, the two common soldiers the night before the battle (the night before battle scenes were some of the best) had more of an emotional kick than any scene he has with the Duke of York, and yet it's York's death that goads Henry into ordering the execution of the French prisoners - something that Hiddleston's performance makes seem out of character, but which would have worked better had he and York seemed genuinely close. Oh well, you can write stuff out of Shakespeare, but you shouldn't really write stuff into it.
I could witter on for ages about this, so I'd better stop. Will just say that I thought the production was superb and so was Hiddleston. He carried the play with his troubled, emotional performance, and the wooing scene at the end was so delightful (and funny - I laughed out loud) that it was quite upsetting when it sequed back to the king's funeral.
Great stuff, altogether. I think the BBC have done Shakespeare proud.
Re: the other fandom-y thing going on this weekend past, the Mark Watches meltdown, I have nothing much to say, except that that old Talking Heads song is right: first impressions often are correct. I'm glad I stuck by mine and stayed well away from Mark and his minions.
ETA: should add that, of course Henry's reasons for invading France (ie. that he thinks he's the true king of France and all that Salic Law stuff is just a smokescreen the French 'usurper' is hiding behind) aren't specious if a person truly and genuinely believes in the divine right of kings, but IMO, of the three kings depicted in these plays, only Ben Whishaw's Richard II comes into that category. Henry IV, a usurper himself, is always conscious that he acquired the crown by force rather than right, and Henry V, while subscribing to the view, is played by Hiddleston as more wanting to believe it than actually doing so.
I can't tell you how tickled I am by this.
Seriously, though, I thought the play - in fact, all the plays in the BBC's Hollow Crown sequence - very well done...
....though unlike the others, I know Henry V well enough to realise when things have been left out.
Not that I've ever seen it on stage - only two previous film productions, the famous Lawrence Olivier one and the one with Kenneth Branagh. So, three very different portrayals of Henry V, of which I think Olivier's is probably the seminal one (for me, anyway), in that I can quite believe his Henry would invade France on such a specious pretext (an explanation of which was one of the bits missing from the latest BBC production) and would be cold and ruthless enough to carry the project through. I didn't care for Branagh's Henry, as I felt Branagh played him as pretty much the captain of the school rugby team (public school, of course, by which I mean private), or it may be that Branagh's looks just lend themselves to that interpretation, I don't know. Anyway, it's not a persona I find particularly attractive, though, conversely the only one of the three interpretations that doesn't make you think "Yeah, right," during the wooing scene when Henry describes himself to Princess Katherine as 'just a plain soldier.'
But anyway, yes, there were several scenes missed out of this latest version (should I call it the 'Loki' version? Perhaps not, that's doing Tom Hiddleston a vast disservice), including the 'if an Englishman, an Irishman, a Scotsman and a Welshman went into a bar' scene (originator of so many jokes), which was inevitable when the Englishman, Irishman and Scotsman hadn't been included in the cast. The king's brothers, as seen in Henry IV parts 1 & 2, were conspicuous by their absence too, though two of them are in the play (they don't do much, as I recall) and when I glanced through the text, I noticed there were three 'conspirators' mentioned, and I don't remember them from any version and have no idea what they were conspiring against.
Never mind, though. Really, this version was all about Tom Hiddleston's performance as the king, which I have to say I loved (for the record I loved Ben Whishaw's Richard II too, and Jeremy Irons's Henry IV). I suppose it was a very 'modern' performance, in that Hiddleston played Henry as consumed by self-doubt and anguish over the suffering his war had inflicted on his own men - a compassionate king, in fact, in tune with the common man, which gives his hobnobbing with the hoi polloi in the Henry IV plays context. He manages to give the impression that he'd deliberately set out to understand his people better by becoming one of them, which makes his rejection of poor old Falstaff a little less brutal (not that Hiddleston ever played it brutal, which it's perfectly possible to do), and also makes you feel he is genuinely regretful for what happened to Bardolph.
This doesn't always work to the production's advantage, though, as Henry's scene with, say, the two common soldiers the night before the battle (the night before battle scenes were some of the best) had more of an emotional kick than any scene he has with the Duke of York, and yet it's York's death that goads Henry into ordering the execution of the French prisoners - something that Hiddleston's performance makes seem out of character, but which would have worked better had he and York seemed genuinely close. Oh well, you can write stuff out of Shakespeare, but you shouldn't really write stuff into it.
I could witter on for ages about this, so I'd better stop. Will just say that I thought the production was superb and so was Hiddleston. He carried the play with his troubled, emotional performance, and the wooing scene at the end was so delightful (and funny - I laughed out loud) that it was quite upsetting when it sequed back to the king's funeral.
Great stuff, altogether. I think the BBC have done Shakespeare proud.
Re: the other fandom-y thing going on this weekend past, the Mark Watches meltdown, I have nothing much to say, except that that old Talking Heads song is right: first impressions often are correct. I'm glad I stuck by mine and stayed well away from Mark and his minions.
ETA: should add that, of course Henry's reasons for invading France (ie. that he thinks he's the true king of France and all that Salic Law stuff is just a smokescreen the French 'usurper' is hiding behind) aren't specious if a person truly and genuinely believes in the divine right of kings, but IMO, of the three kings depicted in these plays, only Ben Whishaw's Richard II comes into that category. Henry IV, a usurper himself, is always conscious that he acquired the crown by force rather than right, and Henry V, while subscribing to the view, is played by Hiddleston as more wanting to believe it than actually doing so.
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Date: 2012-07-23 03:15 pm (UTC)And 'Hiddles' was great bless him. His fangirls went nuts after each 'episode' aired. *g*
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Date: 2012-07-23 03:49 pm (UTC)Having that as a kind of voice over to scene of the king's funeral worked really well, I thought.
Never having seen it on stage, I don't know what they normally do. In the Olivier version, I think they just fade from the wooing scene to the Chorus in close up saying the final speech.
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Date: 2012-07-23 04:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-23 05:53 pm (UTC)Anyway... I gather another cut was the killing of the boys and baggage train which is what tips Henry over into slaughtering the prisoners, rather than York's death (historically some truth in that, btw, as it was thought that there was a French rearguard attack on the baggage train and the huge number of prisoners held by the English looked like a risk. But as you say, one shouldn't read too much history into Shakespeare...). I'll see it slightly less cut at the Globe later in the summer, which is going to be *very* interesting - I don't normally see two productions so close together but I might just remember things for the required month or so.
But overall, really enjoyed. Some great casting and not much else would have got me giving four consecutive Saturday nights over to drama.
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Date: 2012-07-23 10:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-23 10:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-24 11:16 am (UTC)I do hope the icon maker who made this Richard II icon and my Loki ones makes a Henry V one soon.
Heh! It tickles me even more that I get to say that.
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Date: 2012-07-24 11:17 am (UTC)Well, you have Tom Hiddleston to thank for that (who really is very good, so the squeeing is quite justified IMO).
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Date: 2012-07-24 11:25 am (UTC)I'm sure Tom Hiddleston would defer to Branagh (though I don't think he should).
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Date: 2012-07-24 11:37 am (UTC)Ah. I had forgotten this incident altogether. Is it ever explained why they tried to kill him?
York isn't the only actor recast, of course (there were two Northumberlands, for instance), though I did find it a little jarring in this instance. Normally, I'm very pro-mixed racial casting, but it just looked odd having Paterson Joseph be the only non-white member of the cast. I think there should have been a sprinkling of non-white extras at least.
Ageing Henry IV into Jeremy Irons in the 4 historical years between Richard II and Henry IV part I didn't work for me either (1399-1403 really isn't enough to age thirty years...).
I didn't mind that. I think having there be a stronger connnection between the Henry plays with Richard II being a bit out on its own worked okay - in great part because Ben Whishaw's Richard was very much not of this world. If his memory hadn't haunted the two Henrys so much, you might have thought they dreamt him.
I gather another cut was the killing of the boys and baggage train
Yes, that was cut. I remember in the Olivier version, Falstaff's 'boy' was one of the victims. I think cutting that out was a mistake, because it throws the whole 'kill the prisoners' decision onto Henry's grief over York's death, when we haven't really seen an emotional connection between them - which is even more of an error with such an emotional Henry.
But overall, really enjoyed. Some great casting and not much else would have got me giving four consecutive Saturday nights over to drama.
Same here. I hadn't even planned to watch it, but I gave Richard II a look and was captivated by its sheer beauty. That particular aspect wasn't something that continued into the Henry plays, but by then I was completely captivated.
Am still pleased, though, that I watched the Henry IV plays still ignorant of just how popular playing Loki has made Tom Hiddleston.
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Date: 2012-07-24 05:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-24 07:14 pm (UTC)Twitter has been hilarious with the Hiddleston love mixed with the dram criticism. Poor lad, he's such a good actor, but he is also undeniably magnetic. I can't blame the fangirls.
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Date: 2012-07-25 09:02 am (UTC)Ah. Is this the same Mortimer we saw draped all over a Welsh lady in Henry IV part 1, or a different one?
Poor lad, he's such a good actor, but he is also undeniably magnetic. I can't blame the fangirls.
No, me neither.
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Date: 2012-07-25 09:06 am (UTC)I expect BBC America will show it.
The Lawrence Olivier film is very old. It was made during WW2, I believe.
I quite enjoyed Branagh's Much Ado... Have seen his Hamlet on stage, but the performance was so marred by the audience coughing and spluttering that I didn't much enjoy it.
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Date: 2012-07-25 08:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-29 01:24 pm (UTC)I really enjoyed it too. I enjoyed the whole series and I really want to see Olivier's version of Henry V again, now. I bet Lovefilm have it.
Interestingly, I read Henry's order to kill the prisoners differently from you. That might be because I missed some vital speech (I suspect I am getting a little deaf) but he didn't know if the English had won the day and saw the French cavalry appearing to group again.
The way I heard it was as a decision taken to free up the soldiers guarding the prisoners, so they could fight if the French attacked.
When the French herald arrived and conceded the ground, a brief expression of anguish crossed Henry's face, which I read as regret for the order given when it turned out that it had not been necessary.
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Date: 2012-08-02 12:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-02 12:12 pm (UTC)I would like to see it again too. I remember Olivier's Henry as coming across quite cold and ruthless, which I suspect has as much to do with Olivier's personality as it does with anything.
The way I heard it was as a decision taken to free up the soldiers guarding the prisoners, so they could fight if the French attacked.
When the French herald arrived and conceded the ground, a brief expression of anguish crossed Henry's face, which I read as regret for the order given when it turned out that it had not been necessary.
Yes, this was definitely an element. Maybe we were supposed to think it was the biggest element, I don't know. I do think it's a pity they missed out the bit about the French killing the boys guarding the animals.
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Date: 2012-08-02 09:15 pm (UTC)