Film Review: As You Like It, Shakespearean Play Filmed by Director Kenneth Branagh

The Branaghian film nevertheless deviates from the Shakespearean play by:

• inventing a prologue which situates the governmental overthrow by ninja warriors during a Kabuki theatre performance; and
• setting events in British outposts within nineteenth-century Japan.

The venue emerges as particularly supportive of the forest-dwellers’ courage and of the music score’s haunting mix of East and West. It finds itself therefore no way obstructive to the otherwise faithful Branaghian representation of actions, characters, and dialogues.

The action goes immediately from Duke Senior’s (Brian Blessed) banishment into:

• Duke Frederick (Brian Blessed) accepting his niece Rosalind’s (Bryce Dallas Howard) friendship with his daughter Celia (Romola Garai);
• Orlando De Boys (David Oyelowo) beating and rendering speechless Charles the Wrestler (Yee Tsou). 

Accompanied by court jester Touchstone (Alfred Molina), Celia and Rosalind hide behind respective disguises as Aliena (Stranger) and Ganymede after Frederick banishes the latter 20+ miles (32.19+ kilometers) from the court for giving Orlando -- third son of Sir Rowland De Boys -- a necklace. His 80-year-old servant Adam (Richard Briers) likewise is successful in extracting Orlando from his stable home -- subsequently burned by elder brother Oliver (Adrian Lester) -- and into Senior’s counter-court in Arden. The two migrations join company after:

• Amiens (Patrick Doyle) sings Under the Greenwood Tree;
• Celia, Rosalind, and Touchstone trade gold for food so Corin (Jimmy Yuill) can buy his master’s flocks and sheepcote; and
• Orlando turns trees into poem-riddled posts. 

Transgressors know right from wrong when:

• Frederick chooses hermitry over dukedom;
• Oliver decides to heal, not kill, Orlando, ambushed by a lioness;
• Phebe (Jade Jefferies) ends disdaining co-pastoralist Silvius (Alex Wyndham);
• Touchstone follows William’s (Paul Chan) praiseworthiness in viewing Audrey (Janet McTeer) as marriage-, not affair-worthy.

Frederick’s example leads Jaques (Kevin Kline) to hermitry after Oliver, Orlando, Silvius, and Touchstone respectively marry Celia, Rosalind, Phebe, and Audrey. So As You Like It makes 127 minutes culturally enriching and educationally entertaining, thanks to:

• Kenneth Branagh, director, producer, screenwriter;
• Patrick Doyle, music director;
• Neil Farrell, editor;
• Judy Hofflund and Simon Moseley, producers;
• Roger Lanser, cinematographer; and
• Venues in England at Shepperton Film Studios, Surrey, and Wakehurst Place, West Sussex. 

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Bryce Dallas Howard, daughter of director Ron "Opie" Howard, plays Rosalind in Kenneth Branagh's film version of "As You Like It" by William Shakespeare.
Her charming delivery of the epilogue takes place near and at the film's lot-full of trailers.
2008 Toronto International Film Festival: gdcgraphics, CC BY SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BryceDallasHowardSept08TIFF.jpg; Gordon Correll (gdcgraphics), CC BY SA 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/gdcgraphics/5612524473

Outside of the studio, Kenneth Branagh filmed on location at Wakehurst Place near Ardingly, West Sussex, in southern England's High Weald.
Wakehurst Place is a National Trust property managed by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Japanese Garden at Wakehurst Place: Rob Young from United Kingdom, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Japanese_Garden_@_Wakehurst_Place_(5151375028).jpg

"As You Like It" extends the happiness of marital commitment to country folk with the marriage of Audrey and Touchstone.
"Audrey"; 1888 colored lithograph of illustration by genre and maritime painter Philip Richard Morris (December 4, 1836 - April 22, 1902)
William Ernest Henley, The Graphic Gallery of Shakespeare's Heroines (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1888): Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Audrey_-_Philip_Richard_Morris.jpg

"Under The Greenwood Tree" (2:36) Scottish composer Patrick Doyle, as Amiens, sings "Under the Greenwood Tree"
Uploaded July 28, 2018, by Patrick Doyle - Topic to YouTube ~ URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GJYrT-EwDg