Death on the Nile
Several years after Agatha Christie’s great-grandson James Prichard expressed enthusiasm for working with a British actor and filmmaker – Sir Kenneth Branagh, the version of the Death on the Nile was released this February. Announced in 2017. as a sequel to the Murder on the Orient Express by the same production team, the filming started in late 2019. and due to pandemic it took place in London instead on location and the release was delayed several times.
The movie received mixed reviews so far, but its old-fashioned style seems to be generally appreciated.
Poirot 2.0
The latest version of Poirot (Kenneth Branagh), although still proficient in solving crimes, notably differs from the Christie’s characterization, in various ways and to various extents.
Whereas the famous Belgian detective of the past era was consistently mannered, preserving his stringent composure even in the most dramatic situations, today’s Poirot is a man of passion. He gets visibly outraged at times, allowing himself to appear vulnerable in the face of his suspects.
Remember how the old Poirot’s obsessive proclivity to symmetry intimidated aspiring criminals? Well, now it serves more as comedic relief.
Even his signature mustache have grown out of proportion following the sad melodrama set in World War I. After a booby trap mutilates his face during advance of his ground troop in combat, he decided to sprout those enormous mustaches as a cover up for the scars?!?
This new Poirot is a broken man apparently.
I wonder could this be some sort of subliminal messaging about the prospects of detective fiction? Or maybe, even more maliciously, a deliberate attempt to make the character relatable to the movie’s target audience – new generation of old people.
Real Life Steals the Show
Apart from Kenneth Branagh, few other cast members gained noticeable attention. But not for their performance in the movie. Instead, the discussion about the Death on the Nile, morphed into public uproar against its lead actors’ scandals. Focus was promptly shifted to Armie Hammer’s bizarre sexual abuse allegations, Letitia Wright’s anti-vax messaging, and Gal Gadot’s controversial stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict. To name just a few.
The movie plot, with lots of opportunities for acting skills expression including the dramatic twists surrounding the vengeful love triangle, indulgent partying, and dead bodies piling up, somehow became less interesting to the public than free-time activities of the cast.
Enough Champagne to fill the Nile
As the actors’ personalities emerged from the movie more real than their acting efforts, the screen set went in the opposite direction. Overuse of visual effects had made it appear less real, frame by frame, and professionals started expressing concerns about its perceived low fidelity.
Since the whole pandemic chaos threw the production team’s plans under the bus, the original intention of filming in Morocco translated into extensive usage of computer-generated imagery. With all due tech advances, the poorly integrated CGI caused some eyeballs to hurt. Rumors about production aesthetic failures caused by cost-cutting or downright laziness started swirling. Some movie editors and special effect artists publicly criticized the overwhelming CGI that “looks like it was shot at a local TV station’s weather map set”.
Rest assured though, eventually you’ll find a way to filter out the visual discrepancies and disproportionate CGI pyramid. There’s still plenty of cobras, crocodiles, fearsome chunks of crumbling facades, and copious amounts of champagne to serve as a distraction.
Mystery Unsolved
Despite all of the setbacks and shortcomings, one thing remains solid for all of us Agatha Christie fans. The old-time question of whether high class opulence combined with social disparity emerges out of resentment and petty violence, or is it the other way around? And that is the mystery worthy of the world’s best detective attention.