MICHAEL GREEN IS the screenwriter behind all three of Kenneth Branagh’s Hercule Poirot movies, including the latest, the wild and wickedly entertaining tonal shift that is the supernaturally flecked A Haunting In Venice. Inspired by Agatha Christie’s lesser-known Hallowe’en Party, Green almost completely overhauled the source material, taking a quaint English mystery about a murder on Halloween and turning it into a deeply creepy quasi-ghost story that tests Poirot to his limits. It also allowed Green to round up some unusual suspects. Here, he talks us through his key characters…
HERCULE POIROT
Once again played by director Kenneth Branagh, the moustachioed detective begins the movie utterly disillusioned with the turn humanity has taken (A Haunting In Venice takes place in 1947, just two years after the end of World War II). “When we pick up with Poirot, everything about him is to hide the fact that he is heartbroken by the reality of the world,” says Green. “And so he has opted for comfort.” In many ways, he is something of a ghost; a shadow of his former self. “He’s just looking the other way because to see what the world really is is too much. That’s the right Poirot to bring into a movie where he has to face the possibility of faith.” His experiences during the story restore something of Poirot’s spirits, and also leave him a little more open to the possibility of the existence of another kind of spirit, after a near-death experience leads to visions he can’t explain. “Dying briefly makes him potentially just a touch touched that night,” says Green. “Something changes, and Halloween is when the spirits are out. If you’re close to them, you might be the right conduit.”
