3.5*

Great cast but I think that I liked the 1964 film with Richard Burton & Peter O'Toole based on this play better. ( )

The film is better but the play is still good. How amazing it would have been to see Laurence Olivier (Becket) and Anthony Quinn (the king) star in its 1960 opening on the New York stage! ( )

Anouilh's theme is said to be the quandary of the upright individual in a corrupt world. What makes this great literature is that it's not as simple as that. Becket is a complex figure incapable of love yet able to inspire the love of at least two others - his friend and adversary Henry II and his captive mistress Gwendolyn. Nor does he claim to love God. Yet he accepts martyrdom - indeed, it is as if he choreographs his martyrdom at the time and place of his choosing - because he has begun to love the honor of God. Good dialogue, just the right amount of cynical humor. The text doesn't read like a translation. Even the historical flaw of basing one level of the conflict on Becket's supposed Saxon origin doesn't detract from the power of the confrontation. ( )

There are at least two reasons one might find the figure of Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury attractive. One of them is that his career and fate can be seen as an example of the power of faith as a motivating factor, that a man may prove to be faithful to a religion and its teachings even to the point of death in its service. Thus, if one can only believe strongly enough, one's actions can be carried out, confident that one will be rewarded in the afterlife, no matter how unpleasant one's manner of leaving this life will be. The second reason is the example of a person, whose death was such an example to others that his steadfastness in his cause, no matter what his motivation is stirring to us all, and therefore worthy of emulation, for its own sake. Anouilh chooses the second or "Existentialist" approach to recount this story of a bromance that goes very wrong, I read it in french, and perhaps some of the nuances were lost on me due to my weak command of the language. It did make a very compelling movie. ( )

Great cast but I think that I liked the 1964 film with Richard Burton & Peter O'Toole based on this play better. ( )