Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie
After a long — and I do mean long — wait, during which the release date got pushed back several times, Kenneth Branagh’s adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile is finally in theaters! I don’t know about you, but I was counting the days.
Admittedly, adapting a novel into film is a difficult task, and one that often leaves a lot of pieces missing. It’s impossible to include every detail when one is obliged to condense several hundred pages of material into approximately two hours of screenwriting. However, with the acceptance of the old adage that the book is always better, we can enjoy a retelling of the story, which becomes a unique entity born of its parent material. And we can appreciate it as such while treasuring the original source and recognizing the valuable differences between the two.
What, then, were some of the primary differences between Branagh’s adaptation and Christie’s beloved masterpiece?
THE MEETING OF LINNET AND SIMON
In the text, Linnet is introduced to Simon when Jackie brings him to Linnet’s new home, eager for Linnet to approve of him and hire him as a land agent. We can tell that Linnet likes him tremendously, and we receive hints of what is to come, but there’s no fanfare, no fireworks — more of a quiet sigh. Branagh’s choice to have the meeting take place in a bustling scene of music and dancing makes sense for the screen, catapulting our characters into their complicated love triangle right before our eyes with all the fanfare and visible tension that cinema demands.
THE TRIP DOWN THE NILE
Our characters in the film are brought together as a wedding party, rather than tourists who find themselves on the Karnak for a variety of reasons. Linnet (Gal Gadot) and Simon (Armie Hammer) were indeed newly wed in the novel, but the trip was a honeymoon that brought them among strangers. Branagh forms his own connections between these characters, turning them from strangers into something more. A primary example of this is found in Rosalie Otterbourne (Letitia Wright), who in the book has no previous connection of any kind with Linnet but in the film has been cast as an old friend from school. Such choices on Branagh’s part weave unique relationships between the characters which suit the film’s purpose while leaving the basic fabric of the novel’s plot intact.
CHARACTERS CONDENSED
There are some characters from the book who, for one reason or another, didn’t make it into the movie. Colonel Race, a friend and colleague of Poirot’s, doesn’t feature — which is understandable given the amount of complex material they were working with. In some cases, characters whose names didn’t make the cut did receive a surrogate of sorts, with their general role or the details of their character being carried on under another name. One instance of this is Bouc (Tom Bateman), our detective’s lively and cheerful friend who, for all intents and purposes, takes on the position of the novel’s Tim Allerton (with a shade of Mrs. Otterbourne). Windlesham (Russell Brand), meanwhile, retains his name and his history with Linnet but takes on a much larger role than he did in the books by absorbing the duties of Dr. Bessner. While I personally feel the absence of Colonel Race in particular, such choices make sense when required to fit as much dense material as possible into a compact space and choose what to keep or cut.
SO, WHAT’S THE VERDICT?
While there were some significant changes made for the film, those changes are understandable in the context of a motion picture. Branagh executed these details brilliantly, making use of his own creativity and innovation while paying due respect to the genius behind the original mystery. Can any film truly live up to its beloved novel? Probably not. But the world has been presented with a version of this story that we can treasure for reasons all its own. Personally, I’m counting down the days until Branagh’s next Christie adaptation.
