The Contenders:
Michaelangelo Antonioni: Blow-Up
Claude Lelouch: A Man and a Woman
Fred Zinnemann: A Man for All Seasons (winner)
Richard Brooks: The Professionals
Mike Nichols: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Showing posts with label A Man for All Seasons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label A Man for All Seasons. Show all posts
Friday, November 29, 2019
Friday, July 8, 2016
Friday, April 29, 2016
Friday, March 20, 2015
Saturday, August 3, 2013
Watching Oscar: A Man for All Seasons
Film: A Man for All Seasons
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.
Historical dramas are an interesting genre because there’s always the potential that the audience already knows the outcome. It’s a problem I experience with some films when I know the history going in. I didn’t know a lot about the story of Thomas More, but I knew how it ended. In that sense I was essentially waiting for that particular climactic moment. Fortunately, for A Man for All Seasons, the devil is truly in the details. How we get from More’s opening position to his endgame is what is truly interesting, and it’s all in the telling.
To understand the context, we need to start somewhere other than with the main characters. King Henry VIII (Robert Shaw) wants a divorce, which is expressly forbidden by the Catholic Church. He claims that it’s because he married his brother’s widow, meaning the marriage should have never received the Pope’s blessing in the first place. The real reason is that Catherine has never given him an heir, something rather important to a king looking to extend the reign of his family beyond him. Ultimately, this schism is what led to the creation of the Church of England. It also starts the little memory game of the fates of Henry’s wives (divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived).
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