"A Man For All Seasons" and the End of Objective Truth in Movies

 

I will not give in, because I oppose it.  Not my pride, not my spleen, nor any other of my appetites, but I do, I.  Is there, in the midst of all this muscle, no sinew that serves no appetite of Norfolk's, but is just Norfolk? There is. Give that some exercises, my Lord. Because as you stand you'll go before your maker ill-conditioned, and he'll think that somewhere back along your pedigree a bitch got over the wall!

-Thomas More to the Duke of Norfolk in A Man For All Seasons

 If you've noticed I haven't had as many movie reviews this year as I did last, in part because I haven't had the time for the cinema, and also few films have caught my attention so far.  Taking into account that I thought last year featured a weak field for Oscar consideration, I don't know what to make out of this year's lot.  Since I've remained underwhelmed most of my entertainment time recently has been spent catching up with older films I've missed, and one or two old favorites I wanted to watch again. Oh, the wonders of Netflix.

A movie I saw recently yet again, that I've seem probably ten times, is 1966's Best Picture winner A Man For All Seasons (AMFAS).  It's easily in my top 5, though I don't know how well it has held up over the years.  Certainly the late Paul Scofield's Oscar winning turn as Sir Thomas More is timeless, as is the work of the other main players, especially Robert Shaw's Henry VIII and Leo McKern's Thomas Cromwell.  The script, adapted by Robert Bolt from his own stage play, is as crisp as ever.  Being at it's core a filmed play it is slow moving by today's standards, but that's not why I think it's dated.  At the heart of AMFAS is the story of a person who believes that there are things worth dying for.  Bolt makes following one's conscience the central point of departure for his Sir Thomas' motivation, though it's arguable whether the real life More saw his dilemma in that light.  He believed the Bishop of Rome, the successor of Peter, to be the supreme head of the Church on earth by Christ's decree, and no earthly authority had the competence to say otherwise.  That his conscience forbade him from swearing the oath required by the Act of Succession went without saying.  More had no problem condemning Protestants who were following their own consciences during his time as a judge and Chancellor of England.  It was the truth of the Pope's supremacy in spiritual matters that was most important, and the belief that truth is objective, not purely a matter of personal preference made him accept martyrdom.  This concept of objective truth, and self sacrifice in defense of the truth are foreign to contemporary films and the popular mind.  This is what makes AMFAS dated.

In movies today the hero's motivation always comes down to what's in it for him.  No matter how sympathetic the hero or heroine is, no matter how magnanimous their actions, they always get their reward in this life.  Duty, honor, faith and devotion are nice, but doing the right thing and getting the girl is better.  And being able to "be all you can be" and feeling good about yourself is better yet.  As I pointed out in my post on The King's Speech, the film makers had to appeal to a self actualization angle; the overcoming of a speech impediment, to make the story compelling to the contemporary viewer.  That George VI was motivated by duty to country is sweet, but sticking it to his no account, arrogant brother and grabbing the throne for himself, well, that's what it's all about.  Only the contemporary motion picture industry can make a fabulously rich member of the British nobility come off like an everyman underdog. In truth, as Thomas More knew, doing the right thing often comes at a cost.  In More's case it was the loss of property, title and ultimately his head.  There was no earthly advantage to sticking up for what he believed in, and so I don't know that his story would be told today by Hollywood, or embraced by the masses.  

In AMFAS, More meets the Duke of Norfolk as the political pressure is building around him to submit to King Henry VIII's claim on the supremacy of the Church. He decides to end their friendship to protect his friend.  The Duke can not understand this nor why he just doesn't doesn't give in as all the nobility of England has.  Life could then go on comfortably as it did before.  But More tells him, in so many words, that comfort in this life is not the ultimate good that we are striving for.  We are greater than just a collection of bodily appetites and urges that need satisfying.  We are human persons with immortal souls, and there is a truth greater than political expediency or social standing.  If we lose our grip on that we lose our grip on our very identity.  If we forget who we are and what our destiny is we will be found wanting when at last we stand before the Judgement Seat.  I'm not sure any motion picture that had a hero taking this moral stand would be taken seriously by critics today or embraced by mass audiences, let alone win an Academy Award.

The year after AMFAS won the gold statuette Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde was nominated for Best Picture, though it did not win.  This movie is seen by some film historians as the beginning of the "New Hollywood" era.  Bonnie and Clyde and the films that followed in its wake featured more graphic sex and violence yes, but also made heroes of villains and foolish hypocrites of authority.  In 1969 Midnight Cowboy would take the top prize, the first and only X rated film to do so (in fairness the X rating had not yet become associated with pornography in the way it would later, and it was reassigned an R rating a few years later).  Nonetheless, the nudity, shocking for its time, was also accompanied by a mocking of religion and religious symbols (mostly Catholic ones, by the way) and again the promoting of two rather unsavory characters as heroes.  Some would say this was an example of a mature, morally ambiguous approach.  I might prefer to call it morally confused.

No, I don't know if AMFAS would make it today.  But in truth I'm not sure that many of the more controversial films of New Hollywood era, that ran from the late 60's through the 70's, could be made today either.  Popular tastes want the violence and nudity of those groundbreaking films, but not necessarily the dark, ambiguous messages they often had.  I fear that collectively we have few spiritual sinews that serve something other than the need for idle entertainment.

Count this as the end of part one.  I'll be returning to the topic of morality and the movies soon enough.