As You Like It is a 2006 film directed by
Kenneth BranaghKenneth Charles Branagh is an actor and film director from Northern Ireland. He is best known for directing and starring in several film adaptations of William Shakespeare's plays including Henry V , Much Ado About Nothing , Hamlet Kenneth Charles Branagh is an actor and film director from...
. It is based on the play
As You Like ItAs You Like It is a pastoral comedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1599 or early 1600 and first published in the folio of 1623. The play's first performance is uncertain, though a performance at Wilton House in 1603 has been suggested as a possibility...
by
William ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
. The play's setting is relocated from medieval
FranceThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
to a European colony in late 19th century
JapanJapan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
after the
Meiji RestorationThe , also known as the Meiji Ishin, Revolution, Reform or Renewal, was a chain of events that restored imperial rule to Japan in 1868...
. It was shot at Shepperton Film Studios and on location at the never-before-filmed gardens of Wakehurst Place. The film is a production of The Shakespeare Film Company, financed by
HBO FilmsHBO Films is a division of the cable television network HBO that produces feature films and miniseries. While much of HBO Films' output is created directly for the television market, such as the film Witness Protection and the mini-series Band of Brothers, Pacific, Generation Kill and Angels in...
.
Japanese setting
Although the film was not actually made there, Branagh re-imagined the events as taking place in
JapanJapan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
during the late nineteenth century, when many English traders made their homes there - hence the presence of many British actors in lead roles. Duke Senior's court is imagined as a British outpost whose ruler admires Japanese culture; although most of the inhabitants wear European clothes, Duke Senior and his brother both wear Japanese clothes. When the banished characters travel to the Forest of Arden, its inhabitants are played by a mixture of Japanese and Western actors (Phoebe, Silvius and William are Japanese, Corin and Audrey are Westerners). The de Boys brothers Orlando and Oliver are played by
Black BritishBlack British is a term used to describe British people of Black African descent, especially those of Afro-Caribbean background. The term has been used from the 1950s to refer to Black people from former British colonies in the West Indies and Africa, who are residents of the United Kingdom and...
actors.
Despite the change of setting, the language remains that of Shakespeare's play, the names of the characters are the same, and the original plot is followed closely. Some critics praised the setting, others found it unnecessary and irrelevant, since the majority of the characters are not Japanese.
Branagh also invented a new prologue, in which
ninjaA or was a covert agent or mercenary of feudal Japan specializing in unorthodox arts of war. The functions of the ninja included espionage, sabotage, infiltration, and assassination, as well as open combat in certain situations...
warriors stage an attack on Duke Senior and his family as they watch a performance of
Kabukiis classical Japanese dance-drama. Kabuki theatre is known for the stylization of its drama and for the elaborate make-up worn by some of its performers.The individual kanji characters, from left to right, mean sing , dance , and skill...
theater. By including this scene, Branagh is able to show the exact moment that Duke Frederick usurps his brother's kingdom, something that Shakespeare himself omitted. Later on, Orlando fights not merely a wrestler, but a
sumois a competitive full-contact sport where a wrestler attempts to force another wrestler out of a circular ring or to touch the ground with anything other than the soles of the feet. The sport originated in Japan, the only country where it is practiced professionally...
wrestler. The epilogue features Rosalind giving her speech while the camera pans to see that
Bryce Dallas HowardBryce Dallas Howard is an American film actress and daughter of director Ron Howard. She made her acting debut in her father's 1989 movie Parenthood and went on to have small roles in films and make stage appearances for the next several years...
, who plays Rosalind in the film, is walking back to her dressing trailer on the film's location setting.
Release
The film was released theatrically in Italy on September 1 of 2006 and released on Italian DVD on January 23 of 2007. From there it went to theatres in
GreeceGreece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
and
HungaryHungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
.
In the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, HBO began airing the film on TV on the evening of August 21, 2007, but it has never had a true theatrical release in the U.S., only occasional one-time showings, and most of these U.S. showings took place after the film's television premiere, not before. It is the only one of Branagh's Shakespeare films to be released directly to television instead of to theatres in the U.S, though it was not the first to have a very limited theatrical release - Branagh's
Love's Labour's LostLove's Labour's Lost is a 2000 adaptation of the comic play of the same name by William Shakespeare, directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh. It was the first feature film to be made of this lesser-known comedy...
played in U.S. theatres only in
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
,
Los AngelesLos Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, and
BostonBoston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
. In more recent years,
Julie TaymorJulie Taymor is an American director of theater, opera and film. Taymor's work has received many accolades from critics, and she has earned two Tony Awards out of four nominations, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Costume Design, an Emmy Award and an Academy Award nomination for Original Song...
's 2010 film version of Shakespeare's "The Tempest" has also had an extremely limited theatrical release in the U.S. as of November 2011.
Branagh's
As You Like It received a wide theatrical release in the UK on September 21, 2007, exactly one month after its U.S. cable TV debut. It was also shown at a meeting of the
Shakespeare Association of America earlier that year, before making its U.S. TV debut. More than two years after its release, in January 2009, the film began playing theatres in
MexicoThe United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
.
The DVD of Branagh's
As You Like It was released in the U.S. on September 25, 2007.
Reception
The
review aggregatorA review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services . This system stores the reviews and then uses them for purposes such as: creating a website for users to view the reviews, selling information to third parties about consumer tendencies and creating databases for...
Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
awards the film a 31% score, based primarily on the British reviews, which soundly panned it. However, another aggregator,
MetacriticMetacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
, awards it 75%, as it is based largely on the American reviews, which gave it favorable notices. Many American critics hailed the film as a "comeback" for Branagh's Shakespeare adaptations, which had reached what many considered a low point with
Love's Labour's Lost.
A negative U.S. reviewer was film critic
Stanley KauffmannStanley Kauffmann is an American author, editor, and critic of film and theatre. He has written for The New Republic since 1958 and currently contributes film criticism to that magazine....
, who had admired Branagh's film versions of
Henry V,
Much Ado About Nothing, and
Hamlet; he blasted the film, saying that he could barely get through it, and that, by giving it such an unusual setting, Branagh seemed to be trying to "apologize" to the viewing audience for the fact that
As You Like It was a Shakespeare film.
Awards
In January 2008 Kevin Kline received a
SAG award----Best Cast - Motion Picture: No Country For Old Men ----Best Cast - Drama Series: The Sopranos Best Cast - Comedy Series: The Office ...
(Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries) for his performance in this film, although strictly speaking, the film is not a made-for-television movie; made-for-TV films do not play theatrically in other countries
before being released directly to TV in the U.S.; they do so afterwards. This makes Kline the first actor to win a major U.S. award for acting in one of Branagh's Shakespeare films, though some of his others have won critics' awards for the acting in them.
Likewise,
Bryce Dallas HowardBryce Dallas Howard is an American film actress and daughter of director Ron Howard. She made her acting debut in her father's 1989 movie Parenthood and went on to have small roles in films and make stage appearances for the next several years...
received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Made-for-TV Film or Miniseries, but did not win the award.
Cast
- Sacha Bennett
Sacha Bennett is a British actor, writer, producer and director for film and television. He was born in Harpenden, Hertfordshire where he attended St. George's School.-Devilwood:...
as Frederick's Aide
- Brian Blessed
Brian Blessed is an English actor, known for his sonorous voice and "hearty, king-sized portrayals".-Early life:The son of William Blessed, a socialist miner, and Hilda Wall, Blessed was born in the town of Goldthorpe, West Riding of Yorkshire, England...
as Duke Frederick / Duke Senior
- Richard Briers
Richard David Briers, CBE is an English actor whose career has encompassed theatre, television, film and radio.He first came to prominence as George Starling in Marriage Lines in the 1960s, but it was in the following decade when he played Tom Good in the BBC sitcom The Good Life that he became a...
as Adam
- Jonathan Broadbent as Duke's Man
- Paul Chan as William
- Romola Garai
Romola Sadie Garai is an English actress. She is known for appearing in the movies Amazing Grace, Atonement, and Glorious 39, and for appearing in the BBC adaptation of Emma.-Early life:...
as Celia
- Bryce Dallas Howard
Bryce Dallas Howard is an American film actress and daughter of director Ron Howard. She made her acting debut in her father's 1989 movie Parenthood and went on to have small roles in films and make stage appearances for the next several years...
as Rosalind
- Jade Jefferies as Phebe
- Kevin Kline
Kevin Delaney Kline is an American theatre, voice, film actor and comedian. He has won an Academy Award and two Tony Awards, and has been nominated for five Golden Globe Awards, two BAFTA Awards and an Emmy Award.- Early life :...
as Jaques
- Youki Yamamoto as Duke Senior Man
- Adrian Lester
-Personal life:Lester was born in Birmingham, England, the son of Jamaican immigrants Monica, a medical secretary, and Reginald, a manager for a contract cleaning company. He sang as a boy treble in the choir of St. Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham...
as Oliver De Boys
- Janet McTeer
Janet McTeer, OBE is a British actress.-Life and career:McTeer was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, United Kingdom, the daughter of Jean and Alan McTeer...
as Audrey
- Alfred Molina
Alfred Molina is a British-born American actor. He first came to public attention in the UK for his supporting role in the 1987 film Prick Up Your Ears...
as Touchstone
- David Oyelowo
- Background :Oyelowo was born in Oxford, England of Nigerian descent. He is married to actress Jessica Oyelowo and they have three sons.Oyelowo first attended a youth theatre after being invited by a girl to whom he was attracted. He then studied Theatre Studies for A level and his teacher...
as Orlando De Boys
- Yee Tsou as Charles the Wrestler
- Alex Wyndham
Alex Wyndham is an English actor, best known for his role as Gaius Cilnius Maecenas in the HBO television series Rome .-Biography:...
as Silvius
- Jimmy Yuill
Jimmy Yuill is an actor, born in 1959, in Golspie, Scotland.He is a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and later joined the Renaissance Theatre Company. He has appeared in many of Kenneth Branagh's films, most recently as Corin in the 2006 As You Like It...
as Corin
External links