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Katharine Hepburn and Peter O'Toole are the feuding royals in The Lion in Winter |
Director: Anthony Harvey
Cast: Peter O’Toole (Henry II), Katharine Hepburn (Eleanor
of Aquitaine), Anthony Hopkins (Richard the Lionhard), John Castle (Prince
Geoffrey), Nigel Terry (Prince John), Timothy Dalton (Philip II), Jane Merrow
(Alais), Nigel Stock (Captain William Marshall)
James Goldman’s play The
Lion in Winter did solid but not spectacular business on Broadway. But when
it came to film, it surfed a wave of popularity for stories about British
history and became one of the most financially successful films of its year,
winning three Oscars (including for Goldman). Even more than that, it went on
to be West Wing President Jed
Bartlett’s favourite movie of all time. I think we know which prize is the most
treasured.
Christmas 1183 (including an ahistorical Christmas tree and
gift wrapped presents and all) and Henry II (Peter O’Toole), king of England and
huge chunks of France, wants nothing more than family around him to mark the
occasion. Problem is, this is possibly the more dysfunctional family ever. His
Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katharine Hepburn) has been under “home arrest” for
ten years in her castle, and his children Richard (Anthony Hopkins), Geoffrey
(John Castle) and John (Nigel Terry) seem to take it in turns to conspire
against their father, their allegiances shifting faster than even they can
sometimes follow. For added complexity, Henry is living with his late eldest
son’s intended Alais (Jane Merrow) as husband and wife and her half-brother the
new King of France Philip II (Timothy Dalton) is joining the family for
Christmas. Over one night, this family will fight, feud and change pacts and
allegiances until hardly anyone knows where the games end and the hate begins.
Anthony Harvey’s film is a stately, often wordy, faithful
reconstruction of Goldman’s script that gives front-and-centre to the often
scintillating dialogue between the family members, that leans just the right
side of ahistorical (sample line: “Hush dear, Mummy’s fighting”) but frequently
allows it’s top-of-the-line cast to let rip on some glorious speeches and
dialogue duets crammed with ideas, wordplay, character and wit. Harvey
therefore basically decides to sit back as much as possible and allow the
actors do the work, using a mixture of medium shots and close-ups to bring the
focus as much as possible to the Broadway-style staging or into the actor’s
faces. He also uses the strength of the performers to allow for a series of
long takes as they burn through pages of Goldman’s dialogue. The fact that
there is hardly an interesting shot in the film, and its visual language never
matches it’s verbal fire is a shame, but a price the film thinks worth paying.
And it matters little when Harvey is able to work as well
with actors as he does here. All the performers are at the top of their game.
Katharine Hepburn (winning her fourth Oscar, in a tie with Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl) has the perfect level of
acute intelligence and imperious arrogance for Eleanor. But Harvey encourages
from her a softness at crucial moments, that in-between the barn-storming
speeches and verbal putdowns, Hepburn finds moments of quiet sadness and
loneliness – a sense that sometimes ten years of imprisonment means she has had
enough of all this – that are some of her most affecting work on screen. She’s
hilarious but deeply moving – and totally believable as one of the most powerful
women of the middle ages.
She also is matched perfectly with O’Toole. Playing a
50-year old King at 35, O’Toole brings all the fire and charisma of his
personality to the part, in a film where he perfectly balances the
larger-than-life gusto of Henry II with his own personal disappointments, guilt
and sorrow. O’Toole had already triumphed once as the charismatically brilliant
king in Becket (for which he was also
Oscar nominated, as he was here), but this performance is even better. Not only
is his facility with the dialogue faultless, he also utterly convinces as the
sort of awe-inspiring figure who dominates every room he’s in not just with
force of character but the acuity and sharpness of his intellect. This might be
his finest screen performance – and the one where he was most cheated of the
Oscar (losing to a highly active campaign, criticised at the time, from Cliff
Robertson in Charly).
To fill the cast out around these pros at the top of their
game, Harvey raided British theatre to pluck some promising gems from British
Theatre, more or less all of them here in their film debut. Anthony Hopkins is
marvellously proud, forceful but just a few beats behind most of the others as
a Richard who says what he means and sticks to it. Timothy Dalton is his polar
opposite (and equally brilliant) as a Philip II who never says what he means
and manipulates with a playful ease everyone he meets. John Castle (an actor
who never had the career he should have had) is smugly unlikeable and coldly
superior as the unliked middle-brother Geoffrey, while Nigel Terry is a
snivelling punching bag as two-faced coward John. Jane Merrow is heartfelt and
earnest as Alais, the only unquestionably kind and good person in this bunch.
These characters rotate sides and allegiances over the
course of one evening, raging at each other like a medieval Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The
brilliance of the dialogue never stops entertaining – although towards the end
the film loses a bit of energy (it probably peaks with Henry’s loud double
bluff of dragging the family in the middle of the night to a wedding he has no
intention of seeing performed), perhaps partly because the film itself never
really comes to flight as something cinematic. This is despite the decision to
downplay the glamour – costumes are simple and look lived in (the cast wore
them for hours off set to make them look lived in) and sets are far from
pristine. It perhaps contributes to the slightly mundane feel of the
filmmaking.
But the tricks are all in the dialogue and perhaps the film
works best with an interval and a chance to take stock. There are several
marvellous scenes, even if the constant feuding and side changing does wear you
out after a while. But it’s a treat for the acting. Hepburn and O’Toole are
simply at the top of their game, and the rest of the cast more than keep up
with them. With an excellently imposing score from John Barry (also Oscar-winning),
it’s a shame the film itself is a little too flatly and uninspiringly filmed
with a murky lack of visual interest, but there are more than enough qualities
for you to issue a pardon.
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