Translating Shakespeare to film is a difficult proposition because a play and a film achieve their effects in different ways. The theater is more dedicated to language, while film is more shaped by visuals. In translating Shakespeare, though, a blend of the two must be found, and different directors have approached this issue in different ways. Kenneth Branagh directed one of the most successful adaptations of Shakespeare to film in recent years with Henry V (1989), and in doing so, he was daring to reshape not just Shakespeare but a film tradition:
In 1944, Olivier's Henry V was a landmark film, the first screening of a Shakespearean play to succeed brilliantly as a cinematic work of art. Olivier's Henry V became the standard by which all subsequent Shakespearean films have been measured. Accordingly, when Kenneth Branagh . . . undertook to make a new film of Henry V, numerous skeptics proclaimed him audacious for daring to compete with Olivier. When the new Henry V was released, it confounded the skeptics and received universal acclaim as a new masterpiece, not competing with Olivier but reinterpreting the play in a way meaningful for the late 1980's (Magill's Survey of Cinema).
Branagh used numerous film techniques to shape the narrative, differentiate the characters, explain the history, and highlight the drama in keeping with his interpretation of the play.
Consider the importance given to the battle scenes in this film. Battles in Shakespearean drama take place for the most part off stage and are not seen so much as they are reported by a character who returns to the stage and tells others what has occurred. This is the case in Henry V, which covers one of the major battles in English history, the battle against the French at Agincourt. Both major film versions have more freedom to present a large-scale battlefield and to make the battle a part of the action as cannot be accomplished on stage, and Branagh so...