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“Death on the Nile” director Kenneth Branagh explains the film’s core idea

“It is the most unsettled of Agatha Christie’s books. She presents a veneer of sophistication, sexiness, glamour and romance, but it is, at all times, brittle, fragile, dangerous and disruptive.”

“Death on the Nile” director Kenneth Branagh explains the film’s core idea

(Photo : IANS)

“Death on the Nile” director Kenneth Branagh, who stars in the film, shared their idea behind the story and how it affects the cogs in the wheel of the narrative.

In a film based on the 1937 novel of the same name by Agatha Christie, a murder mystery finds its roots in the desire for physical pleasure.

Elaborating on the idea of the film, Kenneth said: “The hunger for s** in Agatha Christie’s original story is very powerful, and people are reckless in their pursuit of it. Their greed for physical satisfaction is dangerous to a murderous degree.”

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Lauding the author’s style of storytelling, he added: “It is the most unsettled of Agatha Christie’s books. She presents a veneer of sophistication, sexiness, glamour and romance, but it is, at all times, brittle, fragile, dangerous and disruptive.”

He added, “We were the lucky recipients of quite a lot of the sort of human texture that is part of why her books are so successful. She’s not merely someone who can write clever puzzles, she writes real people.”

Kenneth and Michael Green discussed how they came up with their idea. “We were having such a good time talking and asking if we got to make another film, and if yes then what would that be? Ken and I each laid out our favorites, but we kept circling back to ‘Death on the Nile’. The book is very well written.”

He added: “It’s got some of Agatha Christie’s best prose in it, and it has this wonderful plot with a wonderful solution. It’s sprawling. We just kept coming back to passion and love, diving into those feelings, and making sure all of our characters really had something to say about those emotions.”

When asked about the changes made to the original source material, he said” “In an Agatha Christie novel, it works to have interesting people hanging around who aren’t suspect. As a result, there were a few minor changes made to the script to help enhance a few of the characters and to fold together others to make them more cinematic, as everyone needs a potential reason to have a motive and opportunity to kill.”

Gal Gadot, Ali Fazal, Armie Hammer, Margot Robbie, Tom Bateman, Letitia Wright, Annette Bening, Russell Brand and Rosie Leslie also star in “Death on the Nile,” which will be released on February 11 in India.

(With inputs from IANS)

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