I love the Olivier version, but Branagh's film just pips it to the post for me. It's probably an unfair comparison because they were made in different times and with different purposes, but this adaptation has an incredible, almost tactile energy to it. Wonderful stuff.
this simple scene always draws great falls of tears from me. i love you, fellow soul. And too your last name, a bit North of mine. Live Gently, until it's time
Every scene with montjoy and Henry v is brilliant montjoy has suck fear in his eyes that his safety is at threat from Henry who’s words and never shouted but packed with intent and emotion
I'm not trying to be disrespectful, but since we would never know if he actually died as he could be anyone at anytime, I like to think he's just pulling am awesome prank. No in all seriousness he was an actor that deserves way more credit and acknowledgement than he gets.
Every single time I watch this amazing piece of historical patriotic art I cannot at some point in the play stop myself from crying . A 20 year retired serviceman and yet the tears flow . I cannot work out why , is it the beauty of the writing , the skill of the actors , the patriotic pride , I have no idea but I am not ashamed any more than the tears i shed on remembrance day . Sometimes to be a man crying is sort of who we are . I cannot work out why
I cry often when I hear Jerusalem being sung or I Vow To Thee My Country. There is nothing wrong with love of one's own country. Cry away mate. There is no shame in a man letting his feelings out. To the contrary, it shows love and respect and that has to be celebrated
Sometimes beautifully composed words feel like beautifully composed music. I cry when I read Gimli and Galadriel’s exchange - when she gives him three strands of her hair. 😢No shame to appreciate beauty. 😊
Men crying has been ridiculed by women who do it all the time - they have claimed it - that's why men only do it when they have no choice - women think they are the only one with feelings - monsters. Sorry to the women who don't think like this , but a Lot of them do.
Kiwi here, at the bottom of the world. Right or wrong, we have British bones or maybe sinews, alongside our other parts, and things like this will make a tear of my own fall. Many of the Works of British artists we also think of as "ours" and effect us as if we had a part in them, which is kinda strange, isn't it?. I never forget though, that right through WW1 and WW2, it was the Indian Division that fought at our right hand . . . It is such a shame that the Empire wasn't run by men who made ALL its people know they were equals. Taken WW1 as the spur of vetting up the colonies as self-ruling Democracies and building them up. We may have kept it going.
A murderous robot, a sweet old hobbit fighting inner demons, a badass general with a heart of gold, a bumbling worrywart father, Jack the Ripper.... Yeah, I'd say Sir Ian has some range.
This movie holds up extremely well. When watching this you don't see "The Middles Ages depicted in the year 1989." What one sees is "Shakespeare at the Battle of Agincourt."
I'm English and even I have to admit that the most dangerous creature on Earth in those days at least was a Welshman with a stick, string and feathers. xD
To be fair there was only 600 welshmen at agincourt the rest were all English but I still respect the brave welsh soldiers who fought at this noble battle
Many times, I have been covered in sweat and mud, bruised and cut, with mucus flowing out of my nose to be told that my team won! It made it all worth it!
I'm not Welsh and neither a Christian. How does one say, "he was a good man, may he rest in peace" in Welsh? If there are any Welsh people reading this please translate. PS: I'm Indian. I'd translate into two languages if you like.
@@rustomkanishka "dyn da ydoedd. gadewch iddo orffwys yn dda." ...Or something like that. I'm not welsh I just think it's a cool language, and Wales is making an effort to bring it back which is great as many countries they've snatched up don't get that chance. I don't mean India or anything. Anyway this is kind of a pointless reply, I'm just sad that he died to be honest. I don't know how I missed that. Peace.
@@matthewcostello3530 It's a lovely touch, I agree. He goes to pray and collapses from the exhaustion... God knows how it must've felt to be fighting full-on for three hours like that with those heavy swords and wearing all that chainmail!
He started as a somewhat comic character, fiercely patriotic. In the March and the Battle the Welsh archers proved their mettle. Fluellen in the flush of an amazing victory points to the no-small part the Welsh played. Henry laughs at the predictable reason he brings up and points out his own Welsh heritage. It’s a great scene.
The character of Flywelyn is actually based on that of Dafydd Gam (David the Lame), an ally of Henry V and his father, Henry IV, during Glyndwr's rebellion, 1400-1415. Glyndwr' himself appears in Henry IV, a prequel to this story, if you will. In reality Dafydd Gam was actually killed at Agincourt.
@TheWelshy83 That's Shakespeare's attempt at spelling Llewellyn. The earliest edition of this play uses Flywelyn. It's an English man's attempt at rendering a Welsh name into English. For a similar reason my name is Griffiths and not Gruffydd.
The Battle of Agincourt is quite well documented for the era. The location of the battle has never been under under dispute, and now not quite 600 years later is not much changed. Henry himself was the among the last true warrior kings of England. Earlier in life Henry had actually had an arrow shot into his face. At Agincourt, when informed his brother Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester had been seriously wounded, Henry took his household guard and stood over his brother, in the front rank of the fighting, until Humphrey could be dragged to safety. The king received an axe blow to the head for his trouble, which knocked off a piece of the crown that formed part of his helmet.
Such a marvelous movie.I'm an American,and no disrespect to my countrymen,but all of my favorite actors are from the U.K.😁Kenneth Branagh,Alan Rickman,Charles Dance are three of my absolute favorites.Every movie with Alan and Kenneth that I've seen,have required me to use a drool bib for the entire running time!😂
What a heart-warming scene! After the tragedy of the slaying of the boys, to find kinship and love from a fellow countryman. Get me a handkerchief . . . or at least a wee Kleenex. Love this scene played with such feeling!
@@ChrisStavros I don't think this is a matter of anyone's personal reading, but of the larger scholarship. Has any other writer done for their language what Shakespeare did for English? Hundreds of words of vocabulary, new usages, syntactical innovations, and abundant expressive metaphors. He was single-handedly a major link in the development of Modern English. Who compares to that?
@@Spearca When you say there has never been a greater writer in ANY LANGUAGE, then yes the question of one's personal knowledge of languages becomes germane. As far as your question, yes, many other nations have had their own equivalent, literary geniuses creating countless supreme works, inventing words and crafting language. Spanish is often called "the language of Cervantes." Greece has many Shakespeares, playwrights and authors whom Shakespeare no doubt would call his masters in literary powers. The very question, asked in the form that you have, reveals a profound ignorance.
@@ChrisStavros Cervantes is the easy nominee for Spanish, being similarly associated with sayings and phrases that became idiomatic, but linguists making the direct comparison seem to all agree that Shakespeare did more to influence English _structurally,_ as well as being credited with many more individual coinages. Part of the difference seems to be that English was already more diverse than Spanish in its influences, and already well into the long Great Vowel Shift, so it was more flexible, more fertile ground for experimentation.
When I first saw this in ‘88 it was the first time I realized that I would fight and die for this man. One of the greatest speeches ever. And without a teleprompter
I’m a young welsh American who still praises God. I’m saved and it’s no tribute to lineage, but there are still some traditions going strong. I don’t know how the Lords hand has guided us but He still is.
My nephews and nieces are Welsh Americans - some say we shouldnt be proud of who we are and where we come from because we had no choice in the matter. To hell with that. I couldnt be more proud to be a Welshman.
Im a bit confused. Why would anyone make fun of Wales or the Welsh? You guys have an amazing history from the Romans to modern day. I can not think of anything negative of the welsh
@@laurencedankel4751 I know that, obviously. I was praising this movie for showing a strong and brave warrior-king crying with his friend, because too often media portrays crying as unmanly.
I know, right? I love this movie so much! I've already seen it like 20 times but every now and then I watch it again....my favorite scene is the St. Crispin's Day speech. And how cool is Mountjoy the herald?
Why Welsh secessionists in these comments are so upset about a semi-fictitious play expressing Englishmen’ love to the Welsh at a time they both resisted a French and Spanish invasion some 500 years ago today is a true wonder of the human condition.
Especially when they were actually on the English throne. And Henry VII I believe was also of Welsh heritage when he won at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485
Shakespeare's HENRY V reveals a different consciousness peculiar to its time. The battle of Agincourt was won by Norman aristocrats claiming their territorial due. But Shakespeare's Harry feels he's Welsh. I love this play. The feudal mind is all over it.
Mike Ballard Are you are uneducated spastic? The Normans had become English in the late 12th century and the Kings of England became English since the Magna Carta. Agincourt was won by the English...anybody that says otherwise hate the greatness.
Zak Casey The Kings of England had been identifying solely with England since Henry III. By the time Henry V came along, he was well and truly and Englishman. Also King John was the first king to speak English but Edward III made it the official language of parliament. Zak Casey They weren’t French. The Magna Carta was the end point of dual heritage English kings. Starting from Henry III (King John’s son) the kings of England solely identified as kings of England and kings from England...nowhere else. In fact going into the 13th century, English nationalism was so strong across the country that Henry III felt it necessary to name not one but two of his sons after famous Anglo-Saxon saints, one of them would go on to be Edward I....a man that would go on to rally the English by saying the French want to destroy the English language. Skip forward to Henry V....how anybody can claim there’s a tear drop of French left in any of the kings or the nobles is ridiculous and unfounded in history.
Remember which dynasty and monarch Shakespeare wrote this play under. Elizabeth I was a Tudor, whose ancestors were Welsh. Her grandfather Henry VII was identified with a prophesied Welsh hero, Y Mab Darogan.
I think Shakespeare was appealing to his Queen with this whole "Welshness" thing. After all, the Tudors got their very name from the Welsh knight, Owen Tudor, who married the widowed Queen Catherine of Valois, the French princess who was given to Henry V by her father King Charles VI, as part of a peace treaty in 1420. (This was a couple of years after the Battle of Agincourt.) Catherine married King Henry when she was 18, and was widowed by age 20. Henry V died of dysentery while off fighting again in France (they really never learned), about 2 years after marrying Catherine. She gave birth to Henry VI who became King of England when he was about 8 months old, and "King of France" when he was about a year old. Of course, the whole nonsense about being King of France (the cause Henry V fought for) could not be sustained successfully with an infant King. Henry VI could not have sustained it even if there hadn't been a long minority at the beginning of his reign, because he wasn't very good at being a king. It was a scandal when the widowed Queen Katherine married Sir Owen Tudor, but a 175-some years later, it behooved Shakespeare politically to make much of the "Welshness" of Henry V.
Indeed !!....composed and conducted by Patrick Doyle...I believe the orchestra used for the soundtrack was The City Of Birmingham Symphony.... their principal conductor at that time being Simon Rattle.....Branagh used Doyle again for his other Shakespearean films in the same way Olivier used William Walton again following Olivier's Henry V film...😊👍
I never fail to cry at this scene. I'm 1/4 Welsh, so it really touches me. I absolutely love Ian Holm, and of course Kenneth Branagh and so many others in this, but Holm really stands out for me. Addendum: Since seeing this, I've learned my ancestor, Hugh Gregory, was a longbowman at Crecy, the battle Flewellyn is referring to with Edward, the Black Prince of Wales.
+henryvagincourt He was a Plantagenet, the same French Dynasty among others that ruled your Isles from 1154-1485, so yes the UK was still a French Colony until the downfall of the French Dynasties.
A shock to the system for some of the English watching this, finding out that one of their biggest heroes was actually Welsh, although slightly more surprising was when I found out Vinny Jones was Welsh!
If through this film only one more person in the world discovers what a leek is... Then this film was a good thing. There be dragons there to you know..🥰
I kept seeing the bilbo baggins reference, but couldn't figure out who they were referencing. Now i see . Sometimes you forget how far back some actors go.
Weirdly enough for a long time you could actually be both, the Tuders where also from a Welsh line as it's founding member was born in Wales (henry VII) - But bloodlines and nationalisty has always been a litle complicated especially given Wales tended to trace family lines through the mother and England through the father which when you like me with a Welsh mum and an English Dad it gets even more confusing :)
