20th Century Fox held a promotional tour in Europe in early May for their star-studded retelling of Agatha Christie's classic whodunit Murder on the Orient Express, which opens in November. IGN was among the select media outlets invited to ride aboard the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express with cast member Josh Gad (see my interview with him aboard it below) from Venice to Paris before venturing on to London to watch roughly 15 minutes of unfinished footage from the Kenneth Branagh-directed film.
Branagh also stars as Christie's iconic detective Hercule Poirot. He leads a stellar ensemble that includes: Johnny Depp as Edward Ratchett, a shady American dilettante dealer in art/antiques; Daisy Ridley as Mary Debenham, an English governess; Michelle Pfeiffer as Mrs. Hubbard, an American widow; Penélope Cruz as Spanish missionary Pilar Estravados (changed from Greta Ohlsson in the book); Josh Gad as Ratchett’s secretary, Hector MacQueen; Willem Dafoe as Austrian professor Gerhard Hardman (changed from the book's private eye Cyrus Hardman); Judi Dench as the Russian royal Princess Natalia Dragomiroff; Leslie Odom Jr. as Doctor Arbuthnot (he was Colonel Arbuthnot in the book); Derek Jacobi as Ratchett’s butler, Masterman; Tom Bateman as Bouc, the Orient Express Director; Olivia Colman as Hildegarde Schmidt, Princess Dragomiroff’s maid; Manuel Garcia-Rulfo as auto dealer Biniamino Marquez (changed from the book's Antonio Foscarelli); Marwan Kenzari as coach conductor Pierre Michel; and Sergei Polunin as world famous ballet dancer Count Andrenyi and Lucy Boynton as his wife, Countess Andrenyi. (Have a look at this cast of characters in the slideshow below.)
These aforementioned characters are all passengers aboard the titular luxury locomotive, one of whom ends up brutally slain after an avalanche briefly strands the Orient Express in the Alps. Poirot must then deduce who committed the crime and why. While I’m not allowed to describe the footage I saw in blow-by-blow, breakdown detail, I can reveal that they were scenes largely from the early parts of the film as we get to know the passengers, which characters are romantically involved, what their occupations are, and a hint of their individual personalities and quirks. It was all heavy on atmosphere and building tension.
Judging from the footage, Branagh’s film truly captures the opulence of the Orient Express during the Golden Age of Travel, the era in which Christie, whose 1928 journey aboard the train inspired her to pen the tale, often traveled on it. The specifics of the legendary train's layout – its opulent sleeper and dining cars, its narrow corridors, the thinness of its walls -- were all important details for the filmmakers to capture as Poirot’s keen observations of his surroundings allow him to pick up vital clues.
Branagh shot the film on 65mm, using the last four 65mm Panavision cameras in the world, so the definition and depth offered by 65mm helped enhance both the claustrophobic atmosphere and epic scope the director wanted to achieve. Both the footage and a display of costumes and props at the press event also made clear that this version of Murder on the Orient Express offers just the kind of glamorous production design, art design and costuming that film industry awards love to honor.
Branagh – who was joined onstage in London by cast members Ridley, Cruz, Gad, Dafoe, Dench, Jacobi, Boynton, Colman, Garcia-Rulfo, Kenzari and Polunin – spoke of his attraction to the project: “I’m addicted to the work of great storytellers, so when you come back to a tale like Agatha Christie you’ve got a tremendous piece of entertainment, but you’ve also got something that touches quite deeply on loss and grief and revenge.”
He added, “Many of these characters have emotional secrets so a chance to combine a vicarious ride in the golden age of travel on the great Orient Express and then people it with the characters embodied by these actors who can bring this kind of detail and emotional depth to it, that was what was exciting to me.”
Kenneth Branagh, Lucy Boynton, Olivia Colman, Judi Dench, Penelope Cruz, Willem Dafoe, Josh Gad, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Derek Jacobi, Marwan Kenzari, Sergei Polunin and Daisy Ridley at the May press event.
Branagh’s vision and efforts to capture the grandeur and scale of being aboard the Orient Express during the 1920s and ‘30s led to his production recreating the famed train itself as a working, moving set. The whole endeavor was to make the cast feel as if they really were passengers aboard the Orient Express at the time Christie’s story takes place.
A fully dressed and moving train -- a 22-ton locomotive, a tender and four complete carriages (each weighing about 25 tonnes) -- was built at Longcross Studios in Surrey, England. There, Branagh shot scenes with his cast aboard the recreated Orient Express as it chugged back and forth along the roughly mile-long track. To further the illusion that his cast was really aboard the Orient Express, over two thousand LED screens mounted outside the windows screened hours of footage of passing scenery of the Alps and European countryside. “I found myself going to the end of the train to watch the scenery go by as if I was on a real train, and I wasn’t the only one,” Branagh said.
The effect was perhaps a bit too real, though, as the filmmaker recalled that many of the cast and crew came down with motion sickness. Still, several actors said it was a unique and engrossing way to bring their characters to life and to bond as a cast.
“It was surreal. I just had the opportunity to go on the real Orient Express, and the detail that the production team brought is unreal, exquisite. It is so spot-on,” recalled Gad. “For us that intimacy really lends itself to Ken’s vision. When you’re in a confined environment, it creates a sense of unease, even if you have nothing to hide.”
Speaking of those with nothing to hide … For Poirot, his iconic and ridiculously large mustache is actually a tool he uses in his job as detective. As Branagh explained, the master detective’s grand moustache (no, Branagh didn’t grow his own mustache for the film) is “at one and the same time a protection and a provocation. He can hide behind it, but also when people ridicule or dismiss him, they underestimate him and therefore his job as a detective becomes much simpler.”
As much veneration as Branagh has for Christie’s 84-year-old story, he promised that his version of Murder on the Orient Express will hold “some surprises” for those who think they already know the tale: “Our goal is to try and find a new approach. That’s why classic stories are worth retelling.”
Branagh’s fresh approach to the material won the approval of Christie’s great-grandson James Prichard, the head of the company controlling her estate, who said Branagh “gets the grandeur of the work, and his vision as he first told it us made my hair stand up.”
Whether audiences’ hairs will also stand up will be known when Murder on the Orient Express rolls into theaters this November.
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