MOVIE REVIEW: 'Becket'


Slightly longer cut of a review in the Friday, March 23 Oregonian ...



It's always a delight to discover that a movie saddled with the ossifying label of "classic" actually has a pulse.

Just so with "Becket" -- or parts of "Becket," anyway.

This Oscar-winning 1964 hit is finally getting a deluxe DVD release in May, now that the print's been restored and the thicket of rights cleared. And MPI is drumming up publicity by touring a gorgeous show-print that plays through March 29 at Cinema 21.

But the biggest treat is getting a chance to discover, on a big screen, that "Becket" contains some hot-blooded, laugh-out-loud scene-chews by two of the greatest, drunkest actors in film history, Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton.

The film, adapted from Jean Anouilh's historically mangled play, is essentially a long flashback -- charting the collapse of a deep and very likely erotic friendship between King Henry II (O'Toole) and his Lord Chancellor, Thomas à Becket (Burton).

And the first half-hour, which charts their better days, is a riot.

It's also wildly homoerotic or at least passionately bisexual. They're not even really trying to hide it, and this is '64: Henry and Becket share a bed, laugh hysterically while riding a horse together, and have their love labeled "unnatural" repeatedly by the frigid women in Henry's life.

O'Toole, playing the Norman king as a grown-up brat, rants and rages and howls with laughter as he spars with the Church in long, funny arias of monologue. Meanwhile, Burton is the straight man -- teaching Henry about a marvelous new invention called "the fork" and acting as enabler while clamping down his true feelings.

The trouble begins when Henry steals Becket's woman on a drunken whim. Then, not long after, the king appoints his best friend Archbishop of Canterbury as a ploy to consolidate power.

But Becket takes his new job seriously -- and it drives Henry to what can only be described as fits of mad jealousy.

Unfortunately, once Burton starts wearing vestments and acting glum and the script keeps these warring friends apart, the Becket scenes in "Becket" take on the stodgy, stagy odor that plagued too many "prestige" historical films of the time.

But on his end of the picture, O'Toole just keeps turning up the volume, and it's thrilling to watch. He played an older, wiser and still-raging Henry four years later in "The Lion in Winter," which plays like a sort of unofficial sequel. "Becket" and "Lion" would make a fascinating (if exhausting) double feature.

Kingly fun & games (The Oregonian, March 23, 2007)

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Posted: Mon - March 26, 2007 at 12:35 AM        

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