I don't think I can ever forgive Kenneth Branagh for what he's done to Hercule Poirot. It starts, obviously, with the moustaches (given their prominence in the oeuvre, I shall use Agatha Christie's spelling, although unlike her I prefer, in M Poirot's case, the plural). The great Belgian detective's moustache is stiff, waxed and with upturned points: as Captain Hastings notes, in their debut adventure The Mysterious Affair at Styles, "Even if everything on his face was covered, the tips of moustache and the pink-tipped nose would be visible".
Poirot's moustache is as the man: small and precise. Branagh's is grey, luxuriant, unruly and, as Greg Gutfeld noted on Fox the other day, appears to have been borrowed from Geraldo, or a trio of passing raccoons. The point about the diminutive Belgian is that he is fastidious in everything, including his appearance. Hastings again: "The neatness of his attire was almost incredible; I believe a speck of dust would have caused him more pain than a bullet wound." This "quaint dandified little man" appears ridiculous in the drawing room of an English country house because his habits - from his pomade to his gleaming patent leather shoes - are not those of the environment in which he finds himself. But he is punctilious about them, as he is punctilious about his detecting. That's the point: The waxed moustaches and the "little grey cells" are all of a piece.
Times change, of course. The exotic Continental tisanes Poirot insisted on to soothe his labors have now been thoroughly anglicized as "herbal teas" whose ubiquity would astonish Captain Hastings. It is also the case that, for a quarter-century on television, David Suchet was as near to a perfect realization as we shall ever see: As the great man explained after hanging up his moustache four years ago, "I had only ever wanted to play Dame Agatha's true Poirot, the man she had created in 1920." I have a preference for the earlier episodes written by my old Bafta buddy Clive Exton (an equally assured adapter for "Jeeves & Wooster"), but the 2010 Suchet version of Murder on the Orient Express is an extremely fine piece of work. As both director and star, Branagh clearly had to do something more than Suchet karaoke, but his solution has been to de-Poirot the little Belgian and produce something almost as unutterably vulgar as Robert Downey Jr's witless Sherlock Holmes. You will note, for example, that in the picture at top right his tie is loosened: "Dame Agatha's true Poirot" would never do such a thing. In the opening sequence, he steps in a large pile of camel dung: The "true Poirot" would have gone back to his hotel to change shoes, socks and trousers. Like Downey's Holmes, the "little grey cells" are a mere peripheral attribute of a big-screen action hero. He uses his cane as Daredevil does his billy club, deploying it to prevent fleeing ne'er-do-wells and open locked doors. He walks along the roof of the train, for no particular reason except to raise the possibility that he's about to go full Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible.
And he has a lost love - "Chère Katherine," as he calls her, alone in his cabin. It's not that the waxed dandy is incapable of love, but that Christie's Poirot in such circumstances would not travel with her framed photograph in his valise, and then set it out on his night stand each night to moon over her before going to sleep. There are surely less dreary and hackneyed ways to distance oneself from Suchet.
Without wishing to give anything away to the three people on the planet who don't know the dénouement, Christie's plot is what we would now call high-concept: It's 1934, and Poirot is a last minute passenger aboard the Orient Express from Istanbul. Overnight in the Calais coach, an unpleasant man is most violently murdered, and, with the train stuck in a snow drift, the director of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits asks the eminent Belgian to solve the case discreetly and spare the company embarrassment. One of a dozen passengers committed the crime, but which? Since Sidney Lumet's original film version in 1974, it has become obligatory to do Orient Express with "all-star" casts: Lumet had John Gielgud and Anthony Perkins as, respectively, the victim's valet and secretary; Lauren Bacall as Mrs Hubbard; Wendy Hiller as the Pricess Dragomiroff; Sean Connery as Colonel Arbuthnott; Vanessa Redgrave as Miss Debenham; Ingrid Bergman in an Oscar-winning turn as a Swedish missionary to Africa; etc. The Suchet version can't match that star-wattage but is pretty stellar for a telly movie: Toby Jones as Mr Ratchett, Barbara Hershey as Mrs Hubbard, Eileen Atkins as the Princess Dragomiroff, Jessica Chastain as Miss Debenham.
Branagh offers as Mr Ratchett Johnny Depp doing his usual tedious and ostentatiously mannered shtick. Michelle Pfeiffer is Mrs Hubbard, Judi Dench the Princess, and Penélope Cruz the no longer Swedish but now Spanish missionary. Leslie Odom Jr (from Hamilton) is Arbuthnott: He's black, not white, and a doctor, not a colonel. Compared to Lumet's cast, it's a bit semi-lustrous, and it doesn't work because nobody has anything to do. Dame Judi says nary a word, and seems faintly resentful at having been roped into the thing. Branagh composes his shots like tableaux vivants - an elaborate overhead view of Poirot and others staring from the corridor into the dead man's room; the dozen suspects seated in a row behind a trestle table in the mouth of a cave, etc - and he lingers so lovingly on these elaborate compositions (not to mention the CGI Istanbul) that there's no room for unimportant stuff like story and characters. When you're turning a whodunnit into a movie, time-management is of the essence. Otherwise you end up doing, as Branagh does, explaining plot developments via clumsily inserted lines of exposition in between exquisitely framed shots of Balkan viaducts, etc.
Lumet managed the dramatis personae far more adroitly: There's only room for each star to get one moment to shine, but they're choice and they work. If it seems bizarre to us now that Ingrid Bergman won an Oscar for a one-scene role, well, the one scene is great - essentially a five-minute speech, shot in close-up and a single take: just Poirot and the Swedish missionary, nervous and twitchy, clutching the detective's arm and explaining that she was born "backward" but has dedicated her life to teaching "brown babies" in Africa who are "more backward". One of the most iconic and glamorous stars is playing a frump, simpleminded, inarticulate nobody, and doing it very compellingly. Branagh was presumably going for a Latin version of the same trick with Penélope Cruz, who certainly looks wan and dowdy here, but without the compensation of a great scene - or, really, any scene at all.
For the difference between the two pictures, look no further than the brace of Arbuthnotts. Sean Connery admired Lumet as a director (they'd just done The Offence together, his first film post-007), and you can see why he liked his one moment in Orient Express enough to accept such a modest role. Arbuthnott is an Indian Army colonel whose faithless wife has returned to England: In a few deft lines, Connery sketches a real man, a full life, and an entire milieu - the Raj, divorce mores of the 1930s, distinctions between the Indian Army and the British Army, DSO and MC, all very particular. "Will you," he barks at Poirot, "give me your solemn oath ...as a foreigner?" he adds, as if unpersuaded that oaths and foreigners are not mutually exclusive. And then he reveals, stiffly, his love for the English teacher from Baghdad, Miss Debenham. And at the end of this revelation Vanessa Redgrave girlishly kisses Connery in front of their interrogators, and you believe that this pair had a life before the film began and will have one when it ends.
No such thing can be said of Leslie Odom Jr and Daisy Ridley in Branagh's version. Miss Ridley is, as before, an English teacher in Baghdad. But Arbuthnott is now a black doctor rather than a white colonel in order that our present can condescend to Christie's past and thereby assert its moral superiority. He exists in counterpoint to a racist Austrian professor, so that characters can present generalized philosophical observations on matters of race (and, in one leaden bit of business, a demonstration of oenological miscegenation in which red and white wines are combined to create an ad hoc rosé). So, unlike Colonel Arbuthnott, Doctor Arbuthnott is not flesh and blood, but an attitude. And, in consequence, Odom and Ridley have nothing to play, and thus have zero chemistry. I am so bloody bored by a solipsistic pop culture incapable of treating the past on its own terms.
Oh, to be sure, Lumet's Orient Express is of its time, and the color and lighting look a bit like a landlubbers' season finale for "The Love Boat", and you can't help noticing in the crowd scenes that an awful lot of these 1930s railway porters seem to have 1970s haircuts. But Lumet was a superb director of actors, and a great organizer of material. He presents the backstory - a shocking murder years earlier halfway around the world - as a prologue, deftly compressing and clarifying perhaps the most structurally problematic part of the source material. By contrast, Branagh creates his own flat and self-indulgent prologue, set at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and featuring a priest, a rabbi and an imam, and then scrambles to fit in the actual Agatha Christie stuff. He also fails to conjure perhaps the most important character of all: the train. In 1974, Lumet hired the world's greatest authority on locomotive sounds. The sound editor worked for six weeks on train noises only. At the start of the adventure, when the train pulls out of Istanbul, every bell, every whoosh of steam, every grind of wheels was completely authentic, right down to the barely audible click as the engine's headlight goes on. And then the film's composer Richard Rodney Bennett handed in his wonderful waltz theme for the scene, and Lumet knew that every single click and clank would be buried and inaudible. "We've heard a train leave the station," he told the sound guy. "But we've never heard a train leave the station in three-quarter time." The fellow walked out and Lumet never saw him again.
It was the right decision. The scene is about style and romance and nostalgia; although it has a train in it, it's not fundamentally about trains as public transit, but about trains as imaginative transportation. Perhaps the weirdest aspect of Branagh's remake is that he seems entirely uninterested in the choo-choo, both in its physical manifestation and as an idea.
Agatha Christie said of the Seventies adaptation: "It was well made except for one mistake. It was Albert Finney, as my detective Hercule Poirot. I wrote that he had the finest moustache in England - and he didn't." True - although I preferred him to Peter Ustinov. But I have no doubt Dame Agatha would regard Branagh and his 'tache as a double-act of vandalism on her detective.
He is, alas, launching a franchise here. At the end of the film, a British officer rushes up to him, and explains that there's been "a death. On the Nile." And off Poirot goes to investigate. No doubt at the end of Death on the Nile, another British officer will inform him there's been "a mysterious affair. At Styles." And perhaps at the end of The Mysterious Affair at Styles someone will rush up and direct him to a small offshore island where there's a bit of a problem with "ten little ...er, whatever", and he can jet-ski in to rendezvous with Miss Marple as a lesbian ninja... Contemporary culture is imprisoned in its own cell, little and grey.
~If you disagree with Mark's movie columns and you're a member of The Mark Steyn Club, then feel free to use your little grey cells and have at him in the comments. Club membership isn't for everybody, but it helps keep all our content out there for everybody, in print, audio, video, on everything from civilizational collapse to our Saturday movie dates.
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Agree with your review in general. As a fan of Suchet's Poirot series, I loved the small screen version from dialogue and acting perspective over Branaugh's. I too was put off by PC rewriting of Dame Christie's characters and inserting today's race issues, totally unnecessary and distracting. I did however think it was a beautifully stylized filmed. Colors were brilliant, snow looked cold, however, it did irritate me that not one of the characters appeared cold when sitting outside, especially the tea interview with Miss Debenham! I actually had to laugh at that because I seemed colder than she in the air conditioned theater. I used to ski - it is cold and noses do get red, breath is seen when talking, and you do wrap up in furs/coats/scarves...not at all depicted in this stylized version.
Oh! Oh! Maitre Mark! One might think it was IMPOSSIBLE for a 1920s-30s period costume flick to have a prominent modern product placement, but there it was at least twice. G-O-D-I-V-A chocolates. Non! I say NON!
Mark replies:
Agreed. If we have to have product placement in Agatha Christie, it should be moustache wax.
Heh! ( :^-} )
Great review. I saw it over the weekend, and it certainly wasn't a *bad* movie, just an unnecessary one. But, it is much better than the truly awful version of a few years back with Alfred Molina as the Belgian detective. The 1974 version holds a very special place in my heart as I watched it with my mother on TV back in the late 1970's during a particularly snowy night in Canada. It was my first encounter with Agatha Christie and my mom promptly dug out her old paper backs for me to read. Good memories.
Related: The New Criterion has posted a Steyn piece from 1998 called "The Entertainment State."
It is available to the general public at the following link:
https://www.newcriterion.com/issues/1998/9/the-entertainment-state
Grazie
I won't be seeing this version, as the mere mention of the title re-opens an old wound: In 1974, the Lumet version was to be screened at my university at 7 pm on a Saturday evening. I'd been looking forward to it, and had scrupulously avoided reading anything that might give me too much information about the mystery. On my way out of the cafeteria at about 6 PM, I encountered a young lady of my acquaintence, and asked her if she was planning to see "Orient Express" that evening. She said she was not, as she'd seen it and found it rather contrived. "I mean, come on, what kind of a solution is ____?," she said, and proceeded to blurt out the solution to the mystery.
I recall being just...stunned. Needless to say, I seethed through the entire film.
I only wish I'd have been able to channel my inner Ralph Kramden: "You are a BLABBERMOUTH!!"
"Contemporary culture is imprisoned in its own cell, little and grey."
It just doesn't seem fair that one person is endowed with this much genius.
As I read this, I kinda wanted to see it for its train wreck anti-qualities, but the feeling passed once I felt I could move the culture an electron's width in the right direction by not encouraging it. One glance at the photo of Suchet as the nearly perfect Poirot, and the notion of a mid-to-late Donald Sutherland playing him became like Wilford Brimley as Charlie Chaplin.
On a related note, I see that the NFL is considering having teams stay in the locker room next year until the national anthem is over: the bollardization of sports. O, the folly and cowardice of craven man. It's a shame to see the billionaire owners in the league proceed so foolishly and short-sightedly, as it gives in to the destructionism of the left. I don't see any self-correction on the horizon in movies or sports until the hemorrhaging of money becomes more advanced. In the case of movies, though, you would think there is a good chance of independent films or movies being made outside the guild, the way Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ was, in order to offer something to those who wish to see movies de-politicized and filled with something more substantive. It's the same puzzle as was remarked about Fox News after it was established - it filled a niche market of 50 percent of the people.
I think this review would have been better titled, "Murder of the Orient Express."
Ha - and how did "Orient" get past the censors?
You beat me to it! Obviously our little grey cells are in sync.
As for the revelation at the end "a death. On the Nile." are you joking? The murder happened when Poirot was on the boat, not before. Just like on flights, they should also have a sick bag on the back of each theatre seat. I would lost my cookies on that one.
Solipsistic = new word for me at 59, but I loved the phrase the moment I read it. Can't wait to use it. Would have come in handy on Thankgiving, when I triggered my pop culture son that the alleged genocidal maniac Columbus was a great man,
By sheer coincidence, as I write this I have the David Suchet "Murder on the Orient Express" all set up and ready to go in my DVD player. It is not only a terrific entertainment in its own right but explores something that Ms. Christie only hinted at in her Poirot novels, the detectives Catholic faith. It's a very dark version of the tale which begins with Poirot's return from Iraq where he has solved the mystery surrounding a scandal at a British army post that results in a disgraced young officer taking his own life. He feels the pangs of guilt for what he has done, a guilt he tries to assuage by telling himself that he was serving the higher cause of justice. This sets up an inner struggle within Poirot between his devotion to justice and his (very Catholic) need to find mercy for a guilty act. Ratchett (Toby Jones) is also seeking mercy and Poirot turns him away. The final scene where Poirot visibly agonizes between serving justice (exposing the true culprits on the Calais coach) and showing them mercy is a brilliant piece of acting on Suchet's part. He exposes the psychological depth of the character when confronted with these two beliefs so central to Poirot's being. My advice is to get "Poirot - Series 12" which has "Murder on the Orient Express" and three other cracking good Poirot mysteries. It is money well spent.
Exactement. David Suchet is Poirot, and Jeremy Brett is Holmes. I met Mr. Brett, along with Edward Hardwicke, one night after a London stage performance. Ah, British/ white European culture -- so oppressive and bad. We are lucky to have progressives to lighten our darkness. As I recall, I returned to my London hotel for chocolate cake and a coffee, but was told that I had to order a full meal to eat in the dining room. They suggested I go to the pub. Which I did. Finally, after about half an hour of negotiations between the pub and room service, I was informed they had no chocolate cake. So, I neither had my cake nor ate it too.
Good review. This film is the casual Friday version of the real thing. Thank you Mark, we shall search out the earlier versions.
One part of the film that made me wince was in the closing sequence where the train puffed away into the sunset, as it were. The engine smoke looked like a tire fire set ten miles behind the actual position of the locomotive. If you are a train aficionado, this film won't do much for you.
I've not seen this film but the photo and Mark's review, combined with my disdain for modern (artistically unnecessary) remakes, makes this one seem almost Monty Pythonesque in its caricature of the far greater earlier productions.
Mark; Just a note in appreciation of your line; I am so bloody bored by a solipsitic *** culture incapable of treating the past on it's own terms".
i have not replaced *** with any of many appropriate words for a current news focus of declaring "accusation(s) = guilty in place. The frenetic search to fill 24 hours of cable/satelite time steadily shrinking the viewing time. Cheers;
Nothing makes me want to see the original more than a Mark Steyn review of a remake.
"I am so bloody bored by a solipsistic pop culture incapable of treating the past on its own terms." That says it all for this guy.
Have not seen a re-make yet where the cast must include representation from all of the "oppressed" in a given society. Hmmmmm; I must have missed the protestor standing at a station with there "Hands Up Don't Shoot" sign.
Good review - I'll stick to the original thank you very much.
Tom in Missouri
Braaaatzafratz . . . . no means to correct a commentary aside from a new commentary.
Okay - please forgive the error ". . . . standing at a station with the "Hands Up Don't Shoot" sign."
Braaaatzafratz . . . .
Tom in Missouri
Lumet was also a great director of New York City. It's only become a cliche to say "NYC was practically a character in his films" because it was so true.
I have no intention of seeing this film -- this genre just isn't my "thing." (And it would involve leaving the house...)
But good Lord:
"At the end of the film, a British officer rushes up to him, and explains that there's been "a death. On the Nile.""??
It's like a line out of "Airplane"! I thought Mark was kidding for a second.
Don't you mean, "And I thought, surely you're joking?"
I'm not joking and don't call me Shirley.
Looks like I picked the wrong day to read a Mark Steyn review.
When is there a "wrong day" for that?
Giovanna, we were playing around with lines from the movie "Airplane" and I was paraphrasing a joke running through the movie (which you can see at the link). Don't feel bad if you didn't know that as I'm apparently one of three people on the planet who doesn't know the denouement. Seriously, who did it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmW-ScmGRMA
Yeah, Steven, I did get that. And I apologize...I should have indicated a smile or something in my response. I was only funnin' with ya'. But for some reason I'd forgotten McCroskey's (Lloyd Bridges) "Looks-like-I-picked-the-wrong-day..." routine! My bad. Sorry!
Concerning the"Orient Express" denouement, as I recall from the 1974 version (I think), there were two possibilities put forth by Poirot.
So do look up the plot summary online if you're not into reading the novel. That way I won't be "plot spoiling" here! :)
Thanks for the heads up Mark. As a lifetime reader of Christie (or because of being) I never saw Albert Finney's Poirot. However I did enjoy Suchet and couldn't watch pale imitations.
I thought Finney made a very effective Poirot and got nearly everything right although not to the extent of David Suchet. One of the sad but pleasurable things about Lumet's film is that it marks one of the last screen appearances of George Coulouris, one of the finest actors of the 20th Century. He plays Dr. Constantine. Coulouris was, among other things, an original Mercury Player who so vividly portrayed the banker, Mr. Thatcher in "Citizen Kane." The guy had a massive career on stage and screen but did so with such ease and professionalism that he is usually overlooked when discussing really great actors. And he was.
I have one bone to pick. Ustinov wasn't that bad. He gave Poirot a bit of a Columbo aire, which I liked. But he did seem to always be looking for a repast.
Thank you for such a great reveiw. Agatha would be proud of you.
I enjoyed the Ustinov films. Clearly Sir Peter was not a "little" Belgian but his wit, sincerity, good humor and obvious enjoyment in the character saw him through.
Had to chuckle reading the intro as I was talking with my father just yesterday and he refused to go see the movie because of what Kenneth Branagh had done to the Poirot character.
Thank you!! -- "I am so bloody bored by a solipsistic pop culture incapable of treating the past on its own terms."
""I am so bloody bored by a solipsistic pop culture incapable of..." The add-ons were preachy virtue-signaling clichés. The logique and morals absurd. The CG train was rolling far too fast for any semblance of reality. If one had the world's most famous detective in hand, (loudly announced numerous times) then one could simply ask him to help bring a slippery murderer to justice... gah! None of the 'clues' felt like 'clues' that really moved the plot forward. And yes, it totes seemed like a make-work program for has-been stars. It could have been so good...!
The Japanese version is quite good. The detective doesn't even try to look like Poirot. The train travels through Japan. The first half is the plot we're used to and the second half is the meticulous planning of the crime. The clothing is exquisite, the acting is very good. I don't really like changes to AC mysteries but I really enjoyed this. I won't see the Branagh version. It sounds awful and he looks ridiculous.
That sounds like a great version. Do you know if it's on Netflix (even DVD)? Or a link to it on imdb.com?
Thanks! :D
I found it on Amazon. It was shown originally on Japanese TV. Here's the Amazon link although it's unavailable right now: https://www.amazon.com/Murder-Orient-Express-Satsujin-Japanese/dp/B014G8OIQI/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1511709742&sr=8-3&keywords=Murder+on+the+Orient+Express+Japanese+DVD
Thank you! :)
The YouTube trailer for this Japanese version of MOTOE looks terrific! I can't wait for Amazon to get it in again (if it ever does), so I went searching abroad and found a British anime company that purports to have it: https://www.animedvd.co.uk/product/japanese-drama-murder-orient-express/ Reviews of the company look reputable, so I've ordered a copy and will hope for the best. Thanks for revealing its existence to me; I never would have heard of it otherwise.
Thanks for the info. I was looking to buy a second copy to buy as a gift.
Love the review, but I don't think we'll see a sequel. This one's bombing.
Seriously, Mark. Don't hold back next time. Tell us what you REALLY think!
Great review, and you've kept me from wasting time and money on Branagh's fluff. But I will revisit the older ones, so thanks for bringing them up in such vivid contrast. Suchet was to Poirot as Brett was to Holmes: definitive.
Very good, Michael -- took the words right off my keyboard!!
How the $$$ shapes up for the Sequel to this one, I don't know, but Agatha rolls in her grave!!
"Miss Marple as a lesbian ninja.." the rapid decomposition of our culture follows quickly on the heels of the progressive euthanizing of our history. This is the tragic inheritance of the millennials and every subsequent generation. Unless parents teach their children western history and western culture it's beauty will be lost.
That is so true. That's what I think Mark is doing by reviving culture and tracing a path back for those who want a life ring.