Wednesday, September 1, 2010

A Man For All Seasons, 1966 (Grade D)


Director: Fred Zinnemann
Awards: lots and lots
Cast: Paul Scofield; Wendy Hiller; Robert Shaw; Orson Wells; Susannah York; John Hurt, Vanessa Redgrave.
 

STORY PLOT: Sir Thomas More is not able to approve the marriage of Henry the 8th to Anne Boylen --and his life hangs in the breech if he does not make a public statement of his support.

sez say:  Thomas More was a religious fanatic--and it is hard to tell that from this movie.. He over saw burning-at-the-stake of men whom he considered heretics --ie men who criticized Rome.  That seems to me to be a bad thing to do--but it was part of the same dedication that led him to be unable to approve the king's marriage.  

This movie tries to make him into a principled man who can not go against his conscience and who stands his ground no matter the cost.  That was no doubt a message the US was hankering for as we went deeper in the Viet Nam War and a few brave people stood against that disastrous foreign policy. But Thomas More was much more complicated than this story says--just like any person is, who is willing to risk his or her life, in order to defend an ideal.  Do we approve a person's giving no thought to the impact their actions have on their family?  How often is a person so purely and absolutely right  that there is no possibility they could be wrong?  Clearly Thomas More was a fanatic -- and how often, really, is the voice of a fanatic a voice to listen too?  Sometime, yes, but not often...and if you look at the real Thomas More I don't think you'd find him nearly so heroic.  So this is a fairy tale--and maybe a dangerous one.

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