In this episode, we review the movie, "Beckett" directed by Peter Glenville, starring Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole. We discuss the plot, the acting, and the chemistry between the two main actors.
00:00:00.000Hello, beautiful ladies and handsome gentlemen, and welcome to today's video where we're going to be doing husband versus wife movie reviews.
00:00:07.000Today we're going to be doing the movie Beckett, which was directed by Peter Glenville.
00:00:58.000The movie is based on a play called Beckett.
00:01:02.000The play itself was historically inaccurate based upon the plausible, apparently, notion at the time it was written that maybe Beckett was Saxon.
00:01:12.000When the playwright was asked, oh, but isn't he actually Norman?
00:01:16.000He said, uh, something to the effect of, right now, history has decided he's Norman, but I'm writing this in case history thinks again that he's Saxon.
00:01:27.000Henry II thinks he has the cleverest idea ever, and he has his best friend, his chancellor of England, nominated to be the replacement wife.
00:01:35.000The movie is how the rest of that plays out.
00:01:37.000Now that he's been given religious responsibility, he discovers for himself deep well of religious sentiment and honor and that he won't betray his religious mission.
00:02:13.000Between, uh, the two main actors, who are Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole, and in the script, in the story, are Henry II and Thomas Beckett.
00:02:24.000I mean, these are two of the best actors of their time, and they're kind of at the peak of their performances.
00:02:32.000They're both really incredible Shakespearean actors, and even though this isn't Shakespeare, they're using all of the tools that they had, um, been trained with to, to really delve into these characters.
00:02:54.000Is that both men, they play their parts with a manfulness, a confidence, a charisma, a stridency.
00:03:02.000So you get the full range of emotions of the character, but you don't get that kind of over-acted sentimentality that people do as acting nowadays.
00:03:12.000I, you see a lot of actors in movies, especially male actors, and it's, it's either guys who can't act, and so it's more of an action movie thing, or a CW hunk type thing.
00:03:22.000But, when it comes to a grown man who has some measure of responsibility, some measure of a cause that he represents, it doesn't come across, it just, it doesn't feel like there's a seriousness there.
00:03:41.000It doesn't seem like any of the men, the actors that we see nowadays, I, I could name a couple, I could name a couple from today, but I think that it's rare to find actors who can actually embody a king.
00:04:04.000I think that they're both incredibly masculine, and not in the sense that we kind of mean it today, where they're built in a certain way, or they look a certain way, because that's not what it's about.
00:04:15.000It's entirely psychological, and kind of social role, and purpose-driven.
00:04:21.000And that's, that's the thing to me about this movie, is its representation of characters as either tied to purpose, or not tied to purpose.
00:04:55.000So you actually have time to see him as a person who thinks of himself only as a survivor, because as a Saxon, Saxons were treated very, very poorly.
00:05:05.000And that wasn't really their land anymore.
00:05:21.000He doesn't know how to live with honor.
00:05:23.000And it's because he, in my opinion, and I think that it's kind of shown throughout.
00:05:28.000It's because he was living his life with survival as the main, the only function.
00:05:36.000And so his honor just gets pushed to the side.
00:05:39.000He's like that secondary, I can do that.
00:05:41.000I can deal with this when it's important.
00:05:43.000And it's not until he gets to the point where he's the Archbishop that he actually realizes, even though it's been this way for years, that he's not just surviving.
00:05:53.000And so when he doesn't have to just survive, he can find purpose.
00:05:58.000So a brief note on the way honor is used in this movie.
00:06:03.000Honor is higher principle, purpose, anything that would give life the meaning so that you are living for something other than just the mere act of living itself.
00:06:17.000You can imagine the comparison of, oh, if you were just, uh, yeah, if you were kept alive in a coma, are you living for something?
00:06:23.000No, you're just, you would be preserving life that is merely the physical act of being alive versus you are alive to do something, experience something, serve something, maintain an ideal, help other people, build up a nation, honor God, any of those things.
00:06:38.000So honor here for Thomas Beckett, he is a collaborator.
00:06:42.000He is, um, someone who is selling out his fellow oppressed Saxon because he has the opportunity to get away with having the fine material pleasures that attend with being the King's best friend.
00:06:54.000And a wonderful developed theme in the movie is you see him kind of ironically joining in with King Henry II in the debaucherous, disgusting things that he does.
00:07:08.000Thomas helps him out with that, rides around with him, is a fixer for those kind of things, but you see that he is a disdain for it all.
00:07:18.000And he hates himself for doing it, but he has no hook in to anything that he believes that he would actually do rather than this.
00:07:27.000And so he is that kind of nihilist, well, when they'll suffer from this kind of impulse of there's nothing that I find that I can honor.
00:07:37.000Nothing exalted that I'm willing to lower myself before and be humbled beneath to serve, but the mere act of living is so hollow.
00:07:46.000And I recognize how kind of degraded and unfulfilling what I'm doing is that I feel this hollow emptiness, right?
00:07:52.000I won't check out a life. I won't let myself die. I will work to preserve my own life, but the mere act of living makes me hate myself for just doing it.
00:08:00.000And so you see him in this one foot in, one foot out kind of mentality. And it's kind of interesting because they have, he, the way the movie is structured, the way the play is structured going off what you're saying is that you see him at the beginning kind of joyfully partake in what the King is doing.
00:08:23.000And then he sees the King actually talk about Saxon people as its.
00:08:43.000No, even though he says to the girl, like, you're, don't come.
00:08:46.000Well, so I don't think that's a change of heart. I think that's Beckett, one foot in, one foot out. So he enjoys his debaucherous carousing with Henry II.
00:08:59.000And then when there are quieter moments or moments in which it's not just fun and games, but instead the darker turn to it is just there.
00:09:08.000It's when he is in the mode of recognizing and thinking about it.
00:09:12.000And you get the sense that this is the way it's been for a while, that this is the dynamic of the relationship.
00:09:17.000So a thing in the movie is Henry II, even after Beckett is Archbishop and opposes him, Henry II loves and adores Beckett.
00:09:27.000And it's because he recognizes in Beckett that though Beckett, first half of the movie, doesn't have his honor, he is a man of great moral yearning and capacity wasted on serving Henry II.
00:09:43.000He does, because he recognizes when his mother and his wife speak ill of Beckett, he yells at them, he eats them for it, he moans to Beckett after he causes Gwendolyn to die.
00:09:55.000You're gonna hate me now and I can't trust you.
00:09:58.000He yearns for Beckett's love because he knows Beckett is a man of great spiritual and moral potential.
00:10:04.000He says that it's his friendship with Beckett that caused him to realize the idea of his empty style of living.
00:10:12.000And so he hates Beckett now for actually acting on being moral and actually striving to live for something, which means that it's now made apparent.
00:10:20.000And so he can't live, as he says of his barons, you know, you don't think, you just wench or whore, you drink, you fight, you take what you want.
00:10:29.000The thought goes through your heads, you're like hounds, I envy you, I wish I were like you.
00:10:35.000Instead Beckett has ruined me and now that Beckett has actually taken moral action and won't just bring himself down to Henry II's level,
00:10:44.000Henry feels acutely the comparison, kind of the spurning that came with it.
00:10:49.000And because Henry II won't act morally, he won't uplift himself, he will remain a utterly insufficient moral person,
00:10:59.000it burns and rots him and so he needs to tear down Beckett, he needs Beckett to love him and validate him,
00:11:04.000or he needs to just get rid of Beckett so that he doesn't feel the comparison.
00:11:07.000I feel like there's a couple layers to the King's obsession with, with him.
00:11:12.000The, I think that the relationship between Henry and Beckett is also, like that obsession also has to do with the fact that Beckett is unattainable.
00:11:21.000Beckett talks about how he can't love and how he doesn't find love until he finds God.
00:11:29.000And when he, when Henry talks about him, he, he can't not use the word love.
00:11:36.000He has to express how much he loves Beckett.
00:11:38.000And Beckett was never able to feel love for Henry.
00:11:42.000And I think that for Henry, when he could have everything he wanted,
00:11:46.000and he had, in a way, Beckett's body and mind, but he never had his heart.
00:11:52.000Because Beckett was always there for him, but not actually there for him.
00:13:11.000For the survival, and survival is a big thing here.
00:13:13.000Like, there's no ethic in the survival of Beckett because he could be poor and on any given day beaten, abused, plundered, or murdered by one of the barons of Henry II.
00:13:26.000Instead, he's joined in on that, so it won't happen to him and he has a good time of things.
00:13:30.000But he's a smart enough man with enough of an innate moral instinct that he recognizes how hollow that is.
00:13:37.000So, he has no love for that which he does.
00:13:39.000And he hates himself because he knows that he himself is not worth loving because there's no purpose in his own life.
00:13:45.000You can love your life in the sense that it is a life for serving a purpose that you love.
00:13:49.000So, love of God can lead to love of someone.
00:14:05.000I was going to say, isn't it interesting that this big important moment you would think could be a huge plot point, or is a huge plot point, is only given this much screen time.
00:14:15.000And is not revisited, and is not discussed ever again.
00:14:17.000But it's because they, that's not the focus.