Henry V by William Shakespeare, screenplay by Kenneth Branagh, who directs and stars in the film based on Shakespeare’s play - 10 out of 10

 

Henry V by William Shakespeare, screenplay by Kenneth Branagh, who directs and stars in the film based on Shakespeare’s play

10 out of 10

 

 

Shakespeare has long been worshipped as ‘Number One’, nec plus ultra, the zenith and Milan Kundera says – I think that it was in The Unbearable Lightness of Being http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-unbearable-lightness-of-being-9-put.html what a title - that we have to stop calling each and every smart ruffian a ‘genius’ and keep to Leonardo da Vinci, William Shakespeare and Albert Einstein, with a few more, because otherwise, the word will lose its meaning

 

In his marvelous The King’s English http://realini.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-kings-english-guide-to-modern-usage.html Kingsley Amis makes the same argument with many other words, one of them being infamous, which is originally associated with infamy, but it has come to signify (maybe it was just in his day, but I doubt it) famous, just like ‘we love this’ only equals we like this, since it is so frequently wasted on anything

Kenneth Branagh http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/04/hamlet-by-william-shakespeare.html made it on the cover of TIME – if I am not mistaken – some decades back, and it might well have been for his making of Henry V, he was nonetheless riding a big wave, celebrated as the new age Laurence Olivier, who has had his own adaptations of Hamlet, Henry V, which we could compare, or just say they were equally brilliant

 

Somehow, Kenneth Branagh has lived to the promise, especially in 2021 http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/01/one-of-best-movies-of-2021-belfast.html with his phenomenal, semi –autobiographical Belfast, yet, at the same time, he can give you some productions that simply irritate me, although I realize that I am not your best reference point, on the contrary, his appearance as Hercule Poirot is sure to make many cringe at the exaggerated, over the top, pompous take on the detective

Coming back, William Shakespeare has managed to give the public a fantastic, heroic, admired, copied figure in Henry V, whose shortcomings are mentioned – courtiers refer to his younger days and his erring, but he is now a sage, mature, courageous, wonderful leader – only I wonder how much is artistic license here

 

After all, ‘The Bard’ has contributed immensely – nay, he may well be in for more than 99% of the responsibility – in making the world sure that Richard III http://realini.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-lost-king-based-on-kings-grave.html was an absolute monster, with his deformities, the vicious character…

 

Yes, ‘now is the winter of our discontent…and all the clouds that loured upon our house/ in the deep bosom of the ocean buried’ these are among the most spectacular, euphoric, sublime lines that I know of, and Richard III is celebrated as one of the most overwhelming creations of humankind for good reason

Only the truth is the opposite, and demonstrated in The Daughter of Time http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-daughter-of-time-by-josephine-fey.html by Josephine Fey, a crime novel that sits at Number One (we are there again, it must be recorded somewhere, that we have reached literary Nirvana twice, talk of joie de vivre, savoir faire, it is all here) on the Crime Writers Association list

 

Josephine Fey shows you that Richard III was in fact the victim of ‘fake news’ avant la lettre, it is an awful myth that makes the colossal majority of humans count the king among the most reviled, when he has not killed his nephews, and he was in fact a good monarch, and the proper look at documents testifies to this.

Now the opposite may happen with Henry V, and if we apply the Woke, Cancel Culture norms, we are clearly going to find fault with the sovereign –Harvard Professor Tal Ben-Shahar http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/07/positive-psychology-on-youtube-by.html has the most popular lectures in the history of Harvard (you should in fact stop reading this [as if you are] and search for wise course) and he has quite a few mottos, and one of them is Be a Merit Finder, Not a Fault Finder…he also says learn to fail, or fail to learn

 

The main action revolves around the war with France, because Henry V says he is the king of England, but then he also has rights over France and thus the royal there and the Dauphin need to surrender, give up their privileges and just take off, leaving him in charge, which looks like a quite preposterous, vile attitude to take, though the French dauphin was quite offensive when he sent those insulting tennis balls…nonetheless, after Henry’s immediate successor is dead, the next in line ‘loses’ French territories

Evidently, we need to put things in perspective and it has been repeatedly indicated that it is nonsense and stupid to look at the Romans, ancient, medieval nations, leaders and pretend that they must have respected ‘human rights’, played by the rules we now have…what about the future generations then, how will they see the massacre of billions of tortured animals, killed so that we stuff our bellies…

 

One of the best qualified to look into the future is Yuval Harari http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/homo-deus-brief-history-of-tomorrow-by.html and you could do no better that read his supreme works, Homo Deus, Sapiens – A Brief History of Tomorrow and 21 Lessons for the 21^st Century…

 

 

Now for a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world  – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html  

 

From To The Heritage:

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life…As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality…Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’