As You Like It (2006)

Directed by: Kenneth Branagh | 127 minutes | drama, comedy, romance | Actors: Bryce Dallas Howard, Takuya Shimada, Brian Blessed, Richard Clifford, Patrick Doyle, Romola Garai, Adrian Lester, Alfred Molina, Kevin Kline, Janet McTeer, Gerard Horan, David Oyelowo, Richard Briers, Nobuyuki Takano, Paul Chan, Alex Wyndham Jimmy Yuill, Jade Jefferies, Jotham Annan, Jonathan Broadbent, Justin Hoong-Fai Chan, Iain Stuart Robertson, Youki Yamamoto

Anyone who watches the film ‘As You Like It’ by writer and director Kenneth Branagh will immediately notice that this film has quite a thin story. And that is striking for a Shakespeare adaptation. William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) is not least when it comes to telling beautiful, not for nothing world-famous stories. Who hasn’t heard of ‘Romeo and Juliet’, ‘Hamlet’, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ or ‘Macbeth’, just to name a few titles? ‘As You Like It’ is one of Shakespeare’s lesser known plays, and the reason for this is undoubtedly the uninteresting story. It is therefore whispered that Shakespeare himself was not entirely happy with this play, and that he wrote it purely as a crowd-pleaser. It is suggested that he also called the piece ‘As You Like It’. Whether or not the Elizabethan theater audience of Shakespeare’s time appreciated this story, the question is whether it is appropriate for a contemporary movie audience. And for the most part, that’s probably not the case.

Originally written around 1600, but for this film version moved to late 19th-century Japan, where the English had centered and traded small empires, the story is somewhat reminiscent of Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer’. Night’s Dream’. Also in ‘As You Like It’ a group of people end up in the forest, where, driven by love, they experience the strangest adventures, which in turn are caused by all kinds of misunderstandings. It begins with the exile of the reigning duke by his own brother Frederick (both played by Brian Blessed) to the forest of Arden. The old duke’s daughter, Rosalind (Bryce Dallas Howard), still lives at court, who gets along well with Frederick’s daughter Celia (Romola Garai). One day at court, Rosalind meets young Orlando (David Oyelowo), whom she falls in love with instantly. But that same day she is banished from the castle by her uncle Frederick, and Rosalind and Celia flee into the forest of Arden, together with the court jester Touchstone (Alfred Molina). Orlando is now also in the woods, who in turn has fled from his hot-tempered older brother (Jotham Annan). Rosalind devises a ruse to find out how Orlando really feels about her. She dresses up as a boy and often joins Orlando in order to interrogate him. Despite the fact that the story is not really great, and sometimes even downright unbelievable, it is all beautifully portrayed, especially the scenes in the forest. The camera work and the costumes are beautiful, and the bright colors make the film stand out in terms of appearance. Unfortunately, the film is rather long, and the Shakespearean use of language eventually becomes quite tiring, partly because it is not delivered with the same conviction by all characters. Main character Rosalind, played by Bryce Dallas Howard, who is best known for her role as the blind Ivy in M. Night Shyamalan’s ‘The Village’ (2004), is not at all convincing. She does dress up as a ‘boy’ at a certain point, but it is unimaginable that anyone would fall for it here.

‘As You Like It’ was directed and written by Kenneth Branagh, for whom this was not his first Shakespeare production. He also directed and wrote films such as ‘Henry V’ (1989) and ‘Hamlet’ (1996), but his best-known Shakespeare film is probably ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ (1993) in which he also took on one of the leading roles himself. . However, ‘Much Ado’ stands head and shoulders above ‘As You Like It’, in which humor never really becomes funny, and the dialogues are not nearly as sharp and with verve.

‘As You Like It’ is a film from 2006, which was only released on DVD in the Netherlands in 2008, after a cinema release. Shakespeare may have originally written the story as a crowd-pleaser, but unfortunately that is not entirely true for this slow, saccharine film here and there.