Death on the Nile: Branagh's Reverence to Agatha Christie is Like Well Played Parlour Music
By Thom Ernst
Rating: A-minus
I equate a properly executed murder mystery to parlour music. That is—despite the underpinnings of lies, deceit, and murder—a good murder mystery is a quiet rendering of antiquated reverence. It also offers an erudite sense of mischief for the opportunity to spy on the lives of the rich and shameless (which is not necessarily true of parlour music).
This is how I feel about Kenneth Branagh's adaptation of Dame Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile—a film both rich and shameless.
I'll go a step further and suggest that murder mysteries, specifically the brand set by Dame Christie, are not unlike a cinematic restaging of Shakespeare—something Branagh can attest to, having brought both Shakespeare and Christie to the screen.
Branagh is back, as the mustachioed Detective Hercule Poirot.
And though the two authors (Christie and Shakespeare) are unlike in literary achievement, they have an unspoken agreement between the material and the audience.
Death on the Nile is Branagh's second foray into the works of Dame Christie. With Nile, Branagh reprises his starring role on Murder on the Orient Express (which he also directed) as the celebrated detective, Hercule Poirot, the enigmatic, somewhat pompous, and noticeably OCD, mustachioed hero of 33 of Dame Christie's novels.
The role of Poirot has always been a tour-de-force of comic ingenuity riffed with extreme character traits bordering on mockery. Branagh is the lastest of many U.K. actors and at least one American (Tony Randall of all people!) to play the Belgian detective—a cultural miscasting which Belgians have accepted sans sourciller.
But until the curtain drops on such broad characterizations, watching David Suchet, Peter Ustinov, and Albert Finney (I have no reference to comment on Tony Randall's performance) and now Kenneth Branagh, has been one of the delights of an Agatha Christie mystery.
Death on the Nile opens with Branagh attempting to regain footing in a universe where quieter gifts—like the power of observation and deduction—are drowned out by box-office marvels with superhuman strength. (Branagh himself dipped his toe in the Marvel Universe with 2011’s Thor). He begins the film as though it were an origin story, and Hercule Poirot is its hero-in-waiting.
It is 1917, in the trenches of a World War I battlefield. Here, a computer-altered image of Branagh as a young, clean-shaven Poirot counters orders that would lead a battalion to certain death. His decision sets off a series of circumstances that explain everything about Poirot, from his trademark handlebar mustache to his signature tics and manners.
Some will recall that Death on the Nile was made in 1979, when Peter Ustinov had a brief theatrical run playing the famed detective. I have seen that version, and I don't recall it having the exact body count as Branagh's update. Although, such details could well be an impression misremembered.
Branagh has updated the story to meet a growing movement towards inclusion and representation, including a few reveals that, if they were part of Dame Christie's intent, remained a secret even in the novel.
And yet the drama remains anchored in the late ‘20s, for to do otherwise would be to lose much of the story’s charm: the breathtaking scope of pyramids surrounded by desert, the hidden beauty of the banks of the Nile, the richness of the costumes, and the fantasy of life in the era of jazz and free-flowing champagne.
And so, Death on the Nile initially presents a cordial view of a social aristocracy void of racial conflict. Given the era and the class-conscious culture of the film's central characters, it's a distracting conceit, even if Branagh's casting triumphantly opposes standards.
But concerns sparked in the first act don't prevail in the second and third acts. Yet, even with changes made to characters, it is hard to observe Death on the Nile and not notice it as a story seeped in privilege—glorified wealth-porn where the affluent traipse across monuments treating the world as their playground.
Branagh recognizes that the privilege of the characters risks making them unlikable—not the least of which is the after-the-fact casting of the now-disgraced Armie Hammer. Hammer appears as Simon Doyle, the handsome playboy who unceremoniously dumps his fiancé for her best-friend, the heiress, Linnet Ridgeway (Gal Gadot). And for my grumblings, the unfortunate casting of Russell Brand, whose outspoken stand against vaccines, makes his role as the lone doctor onboard glaringly ironic.
Branagh addresses the low-hanging issues (regrets in casting aside) with humour and the occasional observation uncommon and perhaps too progressive for the era. Marie Van Schuyler (Jennifer Saunders), the brisk Communist-supporting heiress with a comical and contradictory disdain of her wealth, speaks to the woke and the progressive. She frequently condemns the excesses offered her even while grudgingly taking part.
The pairing of Saunders with Dawn French as Bowers, Schuyler's devoted but over-worked Nurse, is an excellent bit of inside-casting that works best for a crowd prone to appreciating the material.
Given the rate of successful mystery novels translated into films, particularly ones as popularized as the works of Dame Christie, it seems apparent that a good mystery is not solely dependent on uncovering the who in a whodunnit. If you're banking on the momentum of a bestseller (in this case, a beloved text) to drive ticket sales, then you are banking on a target audience that has probably read the book.
And so, in lieu of surprise, Branagh appeals to expectations, wooing the audience with a rich cast of characters, eccentric and witty, unscrupulous, and immoral, and sets them against a breathtaking backdrop. As is required of the story, Branagh isolates and imposes suspicions and conflicts so that every character becomes equal part victim and villain.
There are ways in which Death on the Nile falters. But in the spirit of allowing the fantasy to wash over me, I freely, perhaps irresponsibly, abdicate the task of revealing the film's failings to my colleagues. I have little doubt that they will come through.
As for me, even with the advantage over Poirot, who has not read the book or seen previous versions of the story, I can only express the joy of watching a master detective at work.
Death on the Nile is directed by Kenneth Branagh. It stars Kenneth Branagh, Armie Hammer, Gal Gadot, Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French, Russell Brand, Emma MacKey, Tom Bateman, Annette Bening, Ali Fazal, Letita Wright, and Sophie Okonedo. Opens in theatres Friday, January 11.