Agony. Ecstasy. (Sodomy?)

There are a lot of things to say about an epic undertaking such as The Agony and the Ecstasy, but the thing I saw most clearly when I watched it was how generic it is. Agony is an amazingly enormous film: gorgeous sets, costumes, locations, battles, photography. And the whole thing is impressive.

But Agony has a structure similar to Becket (1964) and Cromwell (1970) and Mary, Queen of Scots (1971), whereby two very important historical figures – Henry II (Peter O'Toole), Thomas à Becket (Richard Burton) / Oliver Cromwell (Richard Harris), James I (Alec Guinness) / Elizabeth I (Glenda Jackson), Mary Queen of Scots (Vanessa Redgrave) – face off and battle one another, while respecting and even loving one another. In Agony the pair is Pope Julius II and Michaelangelo Buonarotti as they work together to make the Sistine Chapel a reality.

I want also to say how much I hated – I mean absolutely loathed – Alex North's score for this movie. It is awful. Alternating between drummed-up marches and chorus-boys singing alleluias, more than once I begged for the soundtrack simply to shut up. 

There is a rather fascinating scene about Michaelangelo's presumed sodomitical tendencies. Charlton Heston talks to Diane Cilento about how he simply can't love her because of how much he loves art, and the camera can't help but capture all of these sketches of naked men while the conversation happens. I watched with mild amusement and slight horror during the whole of it.

Worth a watch? I think so, although I think Becket and Cromwell are superior.

Mary, Queen of Scots

I probably shouldn't have watched a movie this afternoon, but I'm done with a lot of my work and I felt like a break.

So I watched the Charles Jarrott film Mary, Queen of Scots. Jarrott had a huge hit previously with his film Anne of the Thousand Days, the story of Henry VIII of England and his lover (and later wife) Anne Boleyn, mother of Elizabeth I of England. Anne of the Thousand Days starred Richard Burton and Geneviève Bujold. Now, it may be that I'm misremembering, but I recall it as a really great movie.

The reason I think I might be misremembering is that Mary, Queen of Scots is a sixteenth century soap opera that treats its lead women (Mary Stuart and Elizabeth I) as scheming, catty bitches. There is a lot of good acting in the movie: Glenda Jackson is Elizabeth and Vanessa Redgrave is Mary, but Mary jumps from bed to bed and is consistently outwitted. She comes off as a bit of an idiot and completely inept at ruling a country.

Even the film's tagline is reductive and sensational: They used every passion in their incredible duel... and every man in their deadly game of intrigue!
It's laughable.

I didn't completely dislike it, but this film is about as silly as Elizabeth: the Golden Age with Cate Blanchett. Still Redgrave and Jackson are good in Mary, Queen of Scots. I hadn't seen a Glenda Jackson movie in a long while, so that was nice. Redgrave was nominated for an Oscar for this performance, and Jackson was nominated in the same year for her performance in Sunday Bloody Sunday.