Evan D. As a project this year we are taking a trip through time to revisit all of the Best Picture winners in history, Wings to Anora. A Man for All Seasons is the thirty-ninth film in that series, to see all the other Best Picture reviews, click here. **The Sound of Music will be reviewed out of order so we can see it in theaters Thirteen years after directing From Here to Eternity, Fred Zimmerman joined an illustrious club of filmmakers to see more than one of their pictures win Hollywood’s top prize. His visual sensibilities and affinity for tales of mavericks and rebels made him a natural fit for A Man for All Seasons.
It’s 1529 and England is entering into a state of turmoil. King Henry VIII (Robert Shaw) and his wife, Catherine, have been unable to produce an heir and the King is growing impatient. His majesty wants a divorce so he may marry Anne Boleyn (a cameo by Vanessa Redgrave) and continue efforts to give England a male heir. In a Catholic nation, this presented a grave problem. The King’s absolute authority is enough to get most on board, save for a devout and headstrong lord, Sir Thomas More (Paul Scofield). For the third consecutive year the Best Picture winner was an adaptation of a play. Scofield returned in the lead role to great effect and acclaim. More’s crusade against the King’s divorce coincides with his descent from the high office of Chancellor to his ultimate beheading for treason in 1536. Zimmerman brings a keen eye to the proceedings and makes the adaptation incredibly cinematic. Given the content of the relatively historically accurate story, the experience of watching A Man for All Seasons is somewhat confounding. More sets a striking example of standing firm on your convictions even in the face of enormous pressure. It is a lesson that resounds surprisingly well in our current era of acquiescence to the whims of the powerful. That the cause he is willing to sacrifice himself for is the King getting divorced feels a bit silly from the modern perspective, even knowing that the fundamental issue for More was the creep of Protestantism in his Catholic homeland. Because the action of the film is muted and mostly rhetorical, the success of A Man for All Seasons falls largely on the shoulders of the actors. Shaw’s King Henry is erratic with an almost childlike whimsy. Orson Welles appears briefly as a Cardinal in a memorable early sequence. It is Scofield though that occupies nearly every frame of the film and lifts up the dialogue heavy production. His piercing delivery and sharp wit turn what could be seen as a fool-hearted campaign into a believable moral stand. A genuinely striking performance. For all its virtues, A Man for All Seasons suffers from a certain lack of gravity. Well staged and well acted, the film crawls to its ultimate conclusion with little revelation along the way. The underlying message of living and dying for what you believe in comes through although it is not hard to imagine that theme being relayed in a story that holds up to time better. Zimmerman himself directed a version of that story more successfully with his last Best Picture winner. Still, like From Here to Eternity, A Man for All Seasons feels thematically essential in our modern times. More’s quixotic crusade against the King is a decidedly outdated approach to this sort of David vs Goliath framing but one that still ultimately works. 7/10
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