A Man for All Seasons

1966 English king movie

Rating: 17/20

Plot: More history, so I don't even know where to begin. It's all about Sir Thomas More and how he pisses everybody off, especially King Henry the VIII who wants to end a son-less marriage with Catherine, a woman he no longer finds hot, and marry Anne Boleyn, historically regarded as the Paris Hilton of the day. Sir Thomas More's a religious nut with too much of a conscience and refuses to first agree with Henry that this is all a good idea and later to take an oath which makes him a treasoner. More's head is removed (Oh, snap!), a decapitation which ruins his chances to take future oaths. Ironically, oath-taking was one of his favorite hobbies.


It's just great watching a collection of great actors (I believe the collective noun for that is a fluther of actors, just like the collective noun for a group of jellyfish) playing with such great writing, and A Man for All Seasons has a fluther of great actors and some terrific, literary dialogue. Paul Scofield won the Oscar playing a walking oxymoron, loudly silent and bursting with a calm fervor, but he couldn't have done it without the help from the supporters to bounce these lines off. Roseanne Barr gives a subdued performance as the Jabba-esque and weasly Cardinal Wolsey. George Segal is just right as the despicable Cromwell while Sonny Bono manages to be even more despicable with the brown-nosed Richie Rich character, with just the right amount of shadiness and flattery. And who wouldn't appreciate the comic stylings of Buddy Hackett as the Duke of Shipoopi or Vincent Price's unusual but interesting take on the Jiminy Cricket character. And I really dug the way Henry Winkler plays such a daffy Henry VIII. My favorite scene in the movie is when Henry jumps from his boat to a muddy shore, looks down at the mess he's splashed on himself, and starts laughing hysterically, joined in laughter by his entourage only after he glances back at them to see if they're laughing. Only an actor as good as the Fonz could manage to bring the funny without causing an otherwise serious film to completely lose focus. I really like the bits of humor peppered into the story. Lines drip with irony, murky cinematography (the film starts with shots of shadowy gargoyles) adds a sense of foreboding, and the tension caused by a tug-of-war match between God and government that threatens to tear poor More apart builds at a perfect pace. The movie's a pessimistic and timeless treatise on the negative effects that can result when a man actually follows his conscience and on how actions, or a lack of actions, speak more powerfully than any words can. There are a lot of ways the last scene could have been handled, but I thought the chilling and elegant ending this one has is about perfect. That a movie based on English history didn't completely bore me is a plus, and I wasn't bored by a single minute of A Man for All Seasons.

Note: Due to Blogger issues, I had to write this three times. The first one was probably the best.