When Murder on the Orient Express hit theaters five years ago, director and lead actor Kenneth Branagh joked that he could envision an entire cinematic universe centered around the world of Agatha Christie.

As with the “Marvel cinematic universe”, in which the stories of the comic publisher's superheroes are told on the screen, he also found an ensemble of characters in Christie's books that repeatedly appears in new contexts.

A few delays later due to the pandemic, "Death on the Nile" is now coming to the cinemas, the second remake of a Christie crime thriller in which Branagh not only directs but also takes on the leading role of the mustachioed detective Hercule Poirot.

Maria Wiesner

Editor in the society department at FAZ.NET.

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How do you manage to present a template that has been adapted so often for stage and screen (Peter Ustinov's picture as a detective in a white tropical suit in front of the pyramids is almost iconic) once again in such a way that the nostalgic value and the novelty of the performance not hinder each other?

Branagh knows: What the audience expects from Agatha Christie films is a star cast whose performance makes you forget that you actually already know how the plot will end.

As with “Murder on the Orient Express”, Branagh found stars easily, because it worked so well at the box office that every cast request was fulfilled and the budget for costumes and production design was not tightened either.

So there's Armie Hammer with a string muzzle and Emma Mackey dancing through a London nightclub with so many cymbals that even Patrick Swayze would have gotten hot.

Gal Gadot floats as the extremely rich heiress Linnet Ridgeway in a low-cut silver velvet dress through the moving mass scene, which divides before her like the sea before Moses;

the association is obvious, after all, it's going to Egypt soon.

There, Mrs. Ridgeway will celebrate her dream wedding in front of a high-gloss backdrop, in a small circle of good acquaintances, who all harbor at least one grudge against her.

And since you are trying to escape the groom's jealous ex-girlfriend, the heiress rents a river steamer and takes everyone on a Nile cruise.

Branagh stretches and expands the template

It is already apparent here that Branagh playfully stretches and expands the template, eliminating some figures and giving more space to others, such as Annette Benning as a rich artist with an easel (unfortunately in ironed white linen and not in the extroverted turban-sequin ensembles that Angela Lansbury wore in the 1978 film), Jennifer Saunders is another wealthy heiress who's happy to donate her fortune to any left-wing movement, but can't seem to get the job done without servants (a jab at consumer-shameful fashion radicals; 1978 was still around a Marx-reading communist on board), and Black Panther star Letitia Wright plays the proud manager of black blues musician Salome (Sophie Okonedo).

Because, as a theater expert, Branagh knows talent when he sees it,

The director's love for the theater shines through again and again in the set construction, for example when the ship's crew arrives on deck and distributes themselves into the cabins in a nimble choreography, when corpses are removed in Wes Anderson-esque symmetry or saloon doors for the obligatory final explanatory scene of the master detective be closed in time.

The scenery suits Branagh's stage logic in particular: the ship was built in the studio and placed in a water tank, between sets it ran on the same rails that were already used for the Orient Express train compartments.

And since exotic landscapes alone are no longer enough for escapism, which one likes to attribute to films with nostalgic material and which is also appropriate for them, today (1978 filming was still taking place at the original locations in the Egyptian temple complex of Abu Simbel), this time the aesthetics are approaching the magazines that are defying the print crisis today and advertise with everyday escapes from the too cramped home office.

The salons and cabins of the luxury liner could also be found in the design booklet "Architectural Digest" with their precisely folded ceilings and flashing furniture;

the dresses designed by costume designer Paco Delgado in a 1930s style, in a fashion spread in Vogue.

The fact that people like to follow Branagh in his luxury excesses is also due to the changes and updates compared to the templates.

When you see the classic from 1978 again, the distanced coolness with which Peter Ustinov investigates as Poirot is particularly noticeable.

The late 1970s painted the picture of elegant rationality in the face of murder, greed and jealousy.

Around half a century later, the characters are showing the emotional effervescence that we experience every day on social media.

Affect prevails instead of reason and sentimentality instead of self-reflection.

This doesn't stop at the detective either, and so Branagh looks a little deeper into the soul of the master of the "little gray cells" and reveals not only the secret of the mustache, but also that of the mysterious portrait of a woman,

that Poirot has been lugging around with him for a long time, not just since the Orient Express.

On top of that, he gives the detective the opportunity to flirt.

Are the ingredients for an Agatha Christie cinematic universe there?