The Lion in Winter
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Movie Reviews of The Lion in Winter
Movie Review: Marry Me, "Lion In Winter"--Be My Queen
Summary: 5 Stars
How much do I love "The Lion in Winter"? Let's just say that if man and DVD union were legal in the state of Nevada, I'd rush over to the new Hooter's Casino Chapel and get a quickie marriage to it. We'd live happily for a time and rear three supremely ungrateful children--the oldest of which would bear a striking resemblance to Hannibal Lecter. Someday, though, I know a Deluxe version DVD is going to come out with lots of great features. I'm going to need to upgrade! But instead of just throwing my old copy of "The Lion In Winter" away, I'd banish it to someplace where I wouldn't have to look at it anymore. Occasionally, though, I'd feel nostalgic--especially around the holidays--I'd cart it out to spend time with the family.
Seriously, "The Lion in Winter" is my favorite movie of all time. This is a brilliant film adaptation of a brilliant play, and I cherish it as perhaps the most literate film ever made! The screenplay won a well deserved Oscar, for this movie soars on its dialogue. It is merciless, gut-wrenching, hysterical, powerful and wickedly intelligent entertainment. The verbal bloodbaths, the vicious head games, the intentional cruelty--never has a Christmas been so entertaining. Don't be put off by the pedigree of talent involved with this film. It is not a staid, dignified chamber piece, NO! It is all out family warfare. It is also bitterly funny and uncompromising to the end.
Katherine Hepburn gives her finest performance in an Oscar winning role, and not to overstate it--but I think its one of the greatest film performances ever. Really. Peter O'Toole is dynamic and engaging, and every member of the cast is in fine form. It's especially interesting to see a young Anthony Hopkins and Timothy Dalton, complete with shocking (by 1968 standards) references to homosexuality. Sadly, it's John Castle, as neglected middle child Geoffrey, who often gets overlooked in reviews of this film. Geoffrey, the child who no one claims, is easily the most worthy and most intelligent--yet his cry for attention manifests itself as cold-hearted manipulation. Middle child syndrome has never been so diabolically on point.
Through the years, I have made everyone I know watch this film. It is surprisingly contemporary. We see similar examples of family dysfunction every day in film and TV. But they aren't usually Royals, and they aren't as psychologically challenging. This is GRAND, FUNNY entertainment--and if you fashion yourself sophisticated and literate, this is a perfect movie. Even if you just like popcorn movies, you can enjoy this as extreme comedy.
Perfection.... KGHarris, 10/06.
Movie Review: Easily One Of The Greatest Films Ever Made
Summary: 5 Stars
It is the Christmas season of the year 1183 and England's wise but mercurial king, the aging Henry II, greatest figure in Europe since the death of Charlemagne, does what any good father would: he gathers his feuding family together for the holidays. Ah, but this is not merely any royal family, it is the Plantagents, a clan into whose roiling hearts treachery and violence have been bred as a way of life. There is Henry's oldest surviving son, Richard, later King Richard the Lionhearted, a cruel man who lives for war. There is also Henry's middle son, the cold, calculating Duke Geoffrey, and lastly, Henry's favorite, the spineless, conniving brat of the brood, the seemingly foolhardy but inwardly clever teenaged John, whom Henry wishes to one day succeed him as king. And above all this there is the greatest woman of the twelfth-century, Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine, Henry's wife, whom Henry has locked away in a castle for much of the recent past, revenge for one of Eleanor's many attempts to wrest the kingdom from her much younger husband, a man she loves and hates with vying, passionate emotion. So into the mix they all go, each of these four dangerous individuals wishing to either wear the crown or see that a favored child does so.
Called together to celebrate the festive season, Henry's family hosts a rival king, the cerebrally-adept Philippe Auguste of France, barely more than a boy but clearly quite taken with being king. It is to Philippe's lovely sister, Alais, that Henry's son Richard is nominally betrothed, but whom Henry has amorally made his mistress for the past several years. Philippe arrives with a demand: marry his sister to Richard at once---in effect making his future nephew king of England---or return those substantial French territories Philippe's father turned over to Henry as Alais' dowry. In an odd twist of feudal legalities, Henry, himself a king, is also a vassal of Philippe, even though there is the curious fact that Henry controls virtually as much of France as Philippe himself does. In their negotiations Henry dismisses Philippe as an inexperienced boy, and Philippe in return explains the cruel math of their situation, that simply put, time is on his side, and all he has to do is wait for Henry, a lion in winter, to die. When the two monarchs reach an impasse on the matter of Princess Alais, Philippe is only too ready to deal with Henry's plotting sons and wife, and the deal-making, each scheming side trying to gain better terms than the other, is a thing of great beauty to behold: like a venomous dance of dueling cobras.
In one poisonously-contested night the lives of each of the six principle figures of The Lion In Winter will be irrevocably changed, and how they all reach their end-points is an intricate tale well worth seeing. The performances in this production are without flaw, the dialogue is spoken in a rapid-fire pace simply unseen in films today---"When the king's off his arse, no one sleeps!"--- and the settings, all created in an age before computerized digital effects, are on a sweeping scale.
In the end one gets the sense that Henry, a man who conquered everything but time itself, a force against which no one is safe, was THEE man of his age, as Caesar was before him, Leonardo later was in his, or Bonaparte farther along. And yet we watch as despite all his stubborn brilliance the world Henry has made closes in on him through the course of one familial betrayal after another. Though The Lion In Winter ends on what passes for an optimistic note, anyone familiar with English history of the time knows, as Henry did not, what came next, and that shadow this knowledge casts across the near-jollity of the closing scene makes the conclusion all the more poignant.
Simply one of the greatest films that will ever be shot.
Movie Review: Christmas time with Henry II and family
Summary: 5 Stars
I remember seeing this amazing film one day years ago and I recently rediscovered it. Henry II is the aging King of England whose oldest son and heir has died and so he must name a new heir. So he summons his family to Christmas court: His eldest son Richard is an able soldier, his politically astute middle son Geoffrey, and the spoiled youngest son John who Henry loves the best are the contenders for the throne. Also summoned are Henry's wife Eleanor who has been imprisoned in a tower, the young King of France Phillp and his sister Alais who is Henry's ward and mistress. All these characters have a different stake in the outcome of who becomes Henry's heir as they fight, plot and backstab to get their contender to the throne.
Some reviews have called his movie "wordy" and to be fair it is light on action but it is heavy on intrigue and almost every line in the script (especially those of Henry and Eleanor) is pure magic. The casting is superb with Peter O'Toole as Henry and Katharine Hepburn as Eleanor (She won an Oscar for this role). Look also for young Anthony Hopkins, Nigel Terry and Timothy Dalton. I highly recommend this intelligent and well casted costume drama to everyone.
Movie Review: MEET ELEANOR AND HENRY
Summary: 5 Stars
This has to be my all-time favortie move. Singlehandedly it sparked my interest in British history. I saw it first in a theater and was overwhelmed, remembered it, and got a VHS version as soon as I was able. I have probably watched it at least 50 times since.
Katherine Hepburn and Peter O'Toole are just SUPURB as Eleanor and Henry. Henry Plantagenet's rages were the stuff of legend during his lifetime, and the way O'Toole plays him you can see why. Why Peter O'Toole didn't get an Oscar for this I can't fathom. He IS Henry, as Eleanor says "With a mind like Aristotle and a form like mortal sin," just as Katherine Hepburn IS Eleanor, "I married out of love a woman out of legend..." It is almost like they channeled the personalities of these long-dead monarchs from the ether. Eleanor: "I rode bare-breasted half way to Damascus. Louie had a seizure and I nearly died of windburn....but the troops were dazzled."
I agree with the previous reviewer that Nigel Terry plays a dumbed-down, almost cariciture of John. John Castle plays Geoffrey to a "T", just how you would imagine him, caught between Richard and John, and coming up short in his parent's regard. My only quarrel with anyone in the cast is Anthony Hopkins. He is a wonderful actor, maybe it was the director, but he just doesn't seem right for this part. The historical Richard oozed charisma and confidence, this Richard seems more stolid and repressed, but that's probably just me, since no one else seemed to have a problem with how he was portrayed. Though I will say that in the chamber scene with King Phillip and Henry he is outstanding. Timothy Dalton as Phillip is just perfect.
The dialogue is amazingly crisp and witty, and the attention to historical detail has been well-researched. This movie has an almost intimate feeling to it, as if you are watching the machinations and plotting of a very dynamic and even more dysfunctional family who just happen to rule England, Ireland and half of France. This has to rank up there with one of the finest films ever made.
Movie Review: The ultimate family Christmas movie
Summary: 5 Stars
No movie sums up Christmas or brings back so many memories of Christmases Past than The Lion in Winter. It's 1183 and Henry II's let his wife out of prison to decide the succession at Christmas court in Chinon: he favors John, she favors Richard and nobody cares for Geoffrey. Cue daggers, plots and reopened wounds as everyone tries to kill everyone else and nobody gets what they wanted for Christmas. Part costume drama, part Who's Afraid of Eleanor of Aquitaine? as these jungle creatures scratch and claw at each other's weak spots and almost certainly a lot closer to history as it was lived than as it is written thanks to a truly great screenplay by James Goldman (who stumbled across the plot while researching a play about Robin Hood that would later become the sadly underrated Robin and Marion) that's done justice by it's cast. Katherine Hepburn may have got the Oscar, but Peter O'Toole before the rot set in, reprising and bettering his role from Beckett, matches her tooth and claw, with Anthony Hopkins, Timothy Dalton and John Castle picking up a few tricks en route. The weak links are the reliably awful Nigel Terry's overstated John and Jane Merrow's Alais, a performance as flat as her singing voice, but as they are required to be simpletons and ciphers they don't get in the way. Terrific nasty fun.