A Haunting In Venice

  Blender Dumbass
September 23, 2023

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Sir Kenneth Branagh! That's the end of the review. Just kidding. A Haunting In Venice is the new picture directed by Kenneth Branagh and starring Kenneth Branagh which is a kind of a sub-genre of films of it's own. Branagh started his directorial career by directing a movie where he played the main role. And continued directing movies where he played the main roles ever since. Of course sometimes he might make a movie where he plays not the main character, like the 1992's Peter's Friends where Peter is played by Stephen Fry. And Branagh just has a very big role in it. And sometimes he plays in movies where he is not the director. Like in Dunkirk, Tenet and Oppenheimer all directed by Christopher Nolan. Of course lately he got himself directing jobs where he didn't cast himself what so ever. Like in Marvel's Thor ( where the actor was cast by Marvel ) or Disney's Cinderella where for obvious reasons a middle aged man cannot play the main character. But most of the time he plays the main character in the films he directs. It kind of became a meme at this point that if Branagh directs a film, most likely he plays the main character.




A Haunting In Venice is a third film in the series of films Branagh made about the detective Hercule Poirot. The first one was 2017's Murder on the Orient Express. The second was 2022's Death on the Nile and now a year later we get A Haunting In Venice.

Just looking at the dates you could already see that the movie is smaller than the other two films. The first film was shot on Arri Alexa 65 which is a digital camera with a very big sensor enabling to capture very pretty images. And was shown in cinema using 7 reels of 70mm film. Which is weird, because the movie was shot digitally. Even though in 6.5K. The second movie was actually shot on 65mm film. Which made sense to show the movie in 70mm film.

With A Haunting In Venice Kenneth Branagh, or perhaps Haris Zambarloukos, the cinematographer, had a giggly mood when choosing cameras. They decided that since they will shoot on location in real Venice, they will need the new camera from Sony which is called Venice. And therefor they shot the movie digitally again. And this decision probably made it the first movie in the Branagh Poirot series to be in the 16:9 aspect ratio. Which is kind of weird for this franchise.

Also we can compare the budgets. The first film was made with $55 million. The second was made with a whopping $100 million. And A Haunting In Venice with only $60 million. Which begs the question of why?

I saw a trailer of this movie when watching Oppenheimer. And it confused me a lot. Because just last year we had a movie in this franchise. And suddenly here we go again. This is weird. Though if you look at the scope of the picture it kind of makes sense.

Consider that perhaps Branagh wanted his next project to be a yet another Poirot movie. He chose a story that he liked. And the story ended up being a lot easier production than the last two movies.

The first film was set on a train with locations pretty much all over the world. And it had set pieces like the avalanche that stops the train. Stuff that is hard to do. The second movie is also set in various countries. And the main part of it is set on a boat traveling through Egypt. Which probably was a logistical nightmare considering that they had Gal Gadot as one of the main characters and since she has Israeli citizenship, there could be a problem going to Egypt. And so they had to fake Egypt in England, with landmarks and everything. Which will take time to do.

A Haunting In Venice pretty much needed one building on set and few scenes shot in Venice, where nothing complex actually happens. Which makes the movie a lot easier and therefor it could be done a lot faster. And that might explain why we got it so fast.

All those movies are based on books by Agatha Kristie. And this one is not an exception. Agatha's Poirot books are very well written detective stories, but they are somewhat formulaic. For example the last chapter will be called "Poirot Explains", or "Poirot Propounds Two Solutions", or something of that kind, knowing very well that it's a trope and that people expect to see something like that in the end of a good detective story.

The movie is not going far from the style of Agatha Kristie. Mainly because the good writing here is done by Agatha. Though Branagh is careful to choose stories that have interesting stuff in them.

The first film had a very good twist ending. The second was very emotional for Poirot. Which was different. And in this one we introduce a concept that perhaps Poirot is not so reliable himself. And that was an interesting change of dynamics. The film plays with supernatural things. And you are constantly thrown between opposing sides of the argument of whether it's all real or not. And Poirot sometimes seems to believe the supernatural, because he himself cannot explain some of what he sees and hears. But in the end of the day, in some way, this movie is a Poirot Scooby-Doo flick. The magic, obviously, turns out to be fake. But that doesn't mean that the movie is not scary.

This is the first Branagh Poirot film which is a proper Horror film. With darkness and scary looking characters and ghosts. And Branagh is surprisingly effective at spookiness. I was associating him with a more epic style of film-making, but here he showed that he can make a horror film. ( Even though there is another Branagh horror film that he made in the 90s about Frankenstein. But that one feels more like an epic than this one ).

Branagh often tries to mimic Spielberg. For example, he likes to move his camera a lot and do long takes with camera ballet. But unlike Spielberg, in Branagh movies this is much more noticeable. He isn't very subtle when designing complex camera moves. In A Haunting In Venice I didn't see any of that. He was surprisingly restricted. And I think it's because he wanted to invoke a different feeling. A more spooky feeling. And for that he designed a whole new style. A style that works fantastically, by the way.

Happy Hacking!!!

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