Tonight, I watched for the first time Charlton Heston\u2019s 1988, made for television version of \u201cA Man for All Seasons.\u201d\u00a0 So, of course, when I watch it, I\u2019m comparing it to the 1966 film starring Paul Scofield.\u00a0 And that was a great movie.\u00a0 Great acting, all around.\u00a0 If I\u2019m being honest the Scofield picture is better.\u00a0 But the later film is still a pleasure to watch.\u00a0 And that is because it is essentially the same story.\u00a0 Both movies are based on the same stage play and for that reason both provide the same story and characters.\u00a0 Even large chunks of the dialog are the same.<\/p>\n
Both plays include an argument between Thomas More and his future son-in-law about the value of man\u2019s law in God\u2019s world.\u00a0 It\u2019s one of my favorite parts of the play.\u00a0 He tried to make his daughter\u2019s very idealistic and self-righteous fianc\u00e9 understand that man\u2019s law was made to deal with imperfect humans not angels.\u00a0 And without it we would all be at the mercy of the powerful.<\/p>\n
\u2018William Roper: \u201cSo, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Sir Thomas More: \u201cYes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n William Roper: \u201cYes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Sir Thomas More: \u201cOh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n The image of the law as a windbreak that protects us from the winds of merciless powers that rule the Earth.\u00a0 Wonderful image.\u00a0 The author is a poet, I\u2019d say and a good one.<\/p>\n So even though the later film is not as great as the earlier one it is true to the play and this trueness to the story, even if in the hands of less able actors still manages to provide the same general experience.\u00a0 There\u2019s a satisfaction in watching a play that provides that successful theatrical effect.\u00a0 It draws the audience in and immerses them in the scene, in the words, in the interaction of characters that you care about and believe in for the short time that you sit there and watch and listen.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s a theatrical experience.\u00a0 Most movies do not possess this.\u00a0 Because the rule of movies is, \u201cDon\u2019t tell them, show them.\u201d\u00a0 And even a play is showing us something.\u00a0 But to pull together a scene where the characters are in a space together and they collide and we get to see who they are by what they say is still a very powerful experience.\u00a0 No special effects needed.\u00a0 No need for fancy camera angles.\u00a0 Think of how many great courtroom scenes you can think of.\u00a0 Or a death scene between lovers.\u00a0 The dramatic scene is charged with meaning and all that is needed is a poet\u2019s soul to breathe life into it.\u00a0 Even mediocre actors can take a wonderful scene and give the audience the catharsis that the writer created.<\/p>\n But the truth is this is a relatively rare event.\u00a0 Out of the thousands or tens of thousands of movies that have been made in the last century or so what percentage have this quality?\u00a0 I\u2019d guess it\u2019s much less than one percent.\u00a0 I don\u2019t have any figures to back this up but I doubt it\u2019s a tenth of a percent.\u00a0 Most of the \u201centertainment\u201d produced is awful.\u00a0 It has no soul.\u00a0 And I\u2019m not even talking about its morality.\u00a0 I can imagine that art can be made that\u2019s immoral or even amoral.\u00a0 But what it can\u2019t lack is an honesty about what it\u2019s trying to say.\u00a0 You can claim that the world is a meaningless maelstrom of death and destruction and out of that you can make art that could touch the human heart.\u00a0 Or you can show us sublime love and the selfless sacrifice of a mother for her child.\u00a0 And that could be art too.\u00a0 But mostly what we get is dreck.\u00a0 We might as well be watching a surveillance camera of traffic moving on a street.<\/p>\n I have three good movie versions of \u201cA Christmas Carol.\u201d\u00a0 And I like to watch all three of them.\u00a0 All three provide a close approximation of the story and therefore a similar feeling of catharsis.\u00a0 And likewise, there are some other classic movies that tell a story that was so good that they\u2019ve been redone.\u00a0 One of Shakespeare\u2019s plays or some other talented author\u2019s work.\u00a0 So, I\u2019ll own several versions of the same work.\u00a0 And seeing how different actors and directors bring the classic scenes to life is interesting to compare.\u00a0 But the underlying experience is based on the skill with which the story was crafted and given human meaning.<\/p>\n All that was a lot of words.\u00a0 Maybe it made sense to you.\u00a0 I guess it can be boiled down to the fact that there are such things as timeless classics and they exist because they resonate with something inside our brains or minds or souls.\u00a0 Look for these and own them so that when the crap that you can \u201cstream\u201d on some particular night is just too soul-deadening for you to stand you can reach for this DVD or Blu-ray or whatever technological incarnation exists and feed your soul with something that has meaning and maybe joy.\u00a0 Or at worst find the book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tonight, I watched for the first time Charlton Heston\u2019s 1988, made for television version of \u201cA Man for All Seasons.\u201d\u00a0 So, of course, when I<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,239,818,237],"tags":[1011,2931,3069,190,43,4290,38,1355],"class_list":["post-26053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-movie-reviews","category-ocf","category-reviews","tag-a-christmas-carol","tag-a-man-for-all-seasons","tag-charlton-heston","tag-classic-movie","tag-movie-review","tag-paul-scofield","tag-review","tag-reviews"],"yoast_head":"\n