A Man For All Seasons
A Man For All Seasons began life as a play, and that's more or less what this movie is—a play put on film. The set pieces are a bit more elaborate than most adapted plays, but the bulk of the film has what every play has—mostly stationary actors talking a lot.
Of course, when the dialogue is this good, who cares?
It's easy to see Sir Thomas More as merely the lawyer he was, using the silence afforded to him by the law to avoid having to compromise his principles. Indeed it was his original intention to simply stay out of trouble by resigning as Lord Chancellor and remaining silent about Henry's rejection of the church. Yet even when it became clear that his silence was too loud for the king to bear, More stood his ground, refusing to acknowledge Henry's break from the church to the point of death.
That's a martyr by any definition, and it's why he's now known as Saint Thomas More in the Catholic Church.
Robert Bolt's play is like reading Shakespeare written in the 20th century, and his screenplay is much the same. The words crackle, delivered by one of the sharpest casts you'll ever see. From Paul Scofield's passionate, Oscar-winning lead performance to Orson Welles' brief but captivating cameo, every actor in the film is at the top of their game and completely in sync with each other. No wonder it won Best Picture of 1966.
- July 7, 2008
DVD Extras
Not so much as a trailer on the version that came from Netflix, though a special edition version out there supposedly has a featurette on the life of St. Thomas More.