Il leone d'inverno

I love this film. I love this film. I am not sure that I can say that phrase enough when describing this movie. Lion in Winter is quite simply one of the strangest and most beautiful movies that I have ever seen. It is some wierd amalgam of a 'home for the hollidays' type family drama, and Machiavellian political intrigue.

The essential plot is that it is 1183 and Henry II must declare his successor to the Plantagenet throne. He invites his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine (played by Katherine Hepburn), who is in exile, and his sons to along with king of France, to Christmas dinner. Over the course of the evening truths are told and arguments are had, the film rolls over all of the conventions of the many genres that it plays with and turns them into something new and beautiful.

The film could have been written by Machiavelli himself, and often smacks of the Mandragola. The film demonstrates family disfunction within a very interesting, medieval paradigm. While the film is about issues such as family, loyalty and love, ultimately is most gratifying as a vehicle for O'Toole and Hepburn to chew the scenery and dig into a few truly juicy roles.

It is fantastic film that any lover of dialogue driven drama-comedy should rent and watch over and over again.

Performed to absolute perfection as Henry II plays feudal family chess to select his future heir. With a dialogue as sharp as a dagger, as cold as winter, with greed and jealousy and treachery conjoined. You'll struggle to find a more captivating piece of cinema, or indeed one whose protagonists you'll be so keen to explore further once you've absorbed it.

It's been eight years since I first saw this movie, and it is still my personal live-action gold standard (Lilo & Stitch being my animated film gold-standard). It combines drama, tragedy, razor-sharp comedy, great performances, and the best dialogue that has ever been spoken on film, period.

I found this movie quite by accident--I was a sixteen-year-old with a Katharine Hepburn fixation. She mesmerized me; I wanted to BE her--smart, beautiful, sexy, and unwilling and unable to take anything off of anybody (except for Spencer Tracy, but that's another story). Honestly, I had no idea that there really had been such a person as Eleanor until I saw this movie. After watching my heroine portray her, I was determined to find out, though...so I have Katharine Hepburn to thank for my discovery of a new personal hero, and for my passion for medieval history.

It is true that this movie is not 100% factually accurate, not only because movie making dictates tinkering with history to create an interesting film, but also because, unfortunately, not too much is known about Eleanor herself. In the middle ages, women, even powerful, intriguing women like Eleanor, were not considered "important" enough to merit full biographical treatment. Most of Eleanor's history is recorded in the context of her sons and husbands. A good deal of this history was written by her detractors--people who disliked or disapproved of her for one reason or another. The simple explanation is that they felt that as a woman, she overstepped the bounds of what was considered "acceptable behavior" for a woman of the period.

That being said, this movie is 100% spiritually accurate. It perfectly captures the intrigue, the complexity of emotions and relationships, and tone of the age and the situation at hand. Though the sharp and witty dialogue is often considered a historical anachronism, this is not strictly true. Contrary to popular belief, people WERE educated in the middle ages, even women, if they were fortunate enough to be brought up in noble households, as Eleanor was. She was a brilliant woman, raised in a household where poetry and intelligent conversation were staples (her grandfather, after all, was one of the first troubadours). Henry was an intellectual powerhouse as well--he was a voracious reader who was often caught reading in church instead of paying attention to the sermons! It is unthinkable that these two minds would have produced stupid children, and the notion that the entire family should have only spoken in grunts and simple phrases is equally ludicrous.

Though not historically accurate, as other reviewers have noted, the strength of this movie lies in it's perfect portrayal of some of the most fascinating and complex personalities in recorded history. Henry, Eleanor, Richard, et al., make today's political and royal figures seem like low-rent bumbling hucksters.

How lucky can you be to get a script like this and a cast like this all in the same movie? I've been shocked at some of the negative comments by other viewers. I was quite young when the movie came out, and didn't realize for years that Peter O'Toole wasn't the fifty year old he was playing, and Hepburn was exactly Eleanor's age at the time, so I fail to see the age mismatched some have mentioned. I'm fifty myself now, and I still find O'Toole perfectly plausible as a fifty year old in this movie. (Although, DAMN, he looked GOOD! What a gorgeous man!)

As for the 'anachronistic dialog,' it was extremely intentional and would have been totally wrong without it. To our ears, the possibly more elegant speech of the period would have sounded unnatural; only by using modern language could these people sound to us as they would have sounded to each other - normal.

The acting is brilliant - it would have been very hard to find any other actor who could share a screen with Hepburn without fading away to nothing, or an actress who could have done the same with O'Toole - only two of such power could stand up to one another. And this was absolutely right for these characters - as best we know, Henry and Eleanor were both that kind of person - brilliant, witty, strong-willed powerhouses. Then the supporting cast: Hopkins, Castle, Terry, and Dalton. Granted, they weren't known at the time, so Harvey, the director, may not have realized right off the bat that he had the cast of a lifetime, but he surely must have realized it fast.

Then there's the script. Like most of Oscar Wilde's plays, you could pick it up, open it to any page, and find at least half a dozen quotable lines. No, people aren't normally that witty in real life, but a) these were VERY bright people as historical fact, and b) it's a play/movie! People don't speak in real life as they do in Oscar Wilde either, but it's enjoyable as hell to watch. Get over it!

Some things I love about the movie are that it's made clear that no matter what Henry tells Alys, Eleanor, or himself for that matter, his real love and true equal is always Eleanor, just as he is hers. Also that, despite the at least a dozen apparent power shifts in the course of the movie, at the end, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING has changed. And you can tell that with this bunch, nothing ever will change unless it's due to factors out of their control, like death.

A matter of slight historical correction to other user comments: Alys was legally betrothed to Richard; that's why she'd been raised by Eleanor.

A historical correction to the script is that John, while thoroughly detestable personally, was not at all stupid, sniveling, or whining; his actual character was actually far closer to that of Geoffrey's in the script. Very little is actually known about the historical Geoffrey except that he was actually, if anything, more of a warrior than Richard, and of course, he died quite young, leaving behind two children, the son being the legal heir to Richard, and who died at the age of twelve or so, ostensibly of disease, possibly in reality of John. This wasn't considered that bad a thing, btw, as no one wanted a child as king, and John was the only one of the whole bunch who'd spent most of his life in England itself. The English nobles had seriously resented both Henry's (in his later years especially, as he tried to carve an inheritance for John out of Europe in general, France in particular) and Richard's neglect (Richard had barely set foot in England in his entire life, and was utterly indifferent to it except as a source of revenue). Also, of course, there's no historical evidence for an affair between Henry and Alys EXCEPT that I've read at least one source suggesting that Richard used this as an excuse to not go through with the marriage itself. And there's CERTAINLY no historical suggestion that Richard and Philip had an affair, although it seems highly likely that Richard was gay insofar as he was sexual at all. Bastards of royalty were a dime a dozen in those days, but NONE are attributed to Richard, nor a whiff or rumor of any affairs he ever had. Both Henry and John, on the other hand, would chase anything wearing a dress, and this was considered perfectly normal and even admirable in a "bad boy" sort of way. However, John took it too far, resorting to rape and starvation of wives of political enemies, and this was one of numerous driving forces for the imposition of Magna Carta on him by his rebelling nobles. Ironically, by contemporary standards, at a national level John was a far better king than Richard (Henry at his best was better, but was too often not at his best, being too bent on conquest to bother to rule effectively what he already had). However, John was nonetheless personally a rather nasty man (to put it mildly), once again proving that the best men don't necessarily make the best rulers. His personal character and actions, more than his policies, drove his own nobles into nearly successful rebellion, resulting in Magna Carta, one of the great steps in English history.

Sorry for boring you silly with the history commentary - it's a period I've always found particularly interesting. You can wake up now; I'm finished.

Anyway, great movie in every sense - script, acting, score, cinematography, editing; it just doesn't get better than this.

It is very rare to find an actor who has played the same historical figure twice. Charleton Heston was Andrew Jackson in THE PRESIDENT'S LADY and THE BUCCANNEER (1958). Edward Arnold was Diamond Jim Brady in DIAMOND JIM and LILIAN RUSSELL. Reginald Owen was Louis XV in VOLTAIRE and MONSIEUR BEAUCAIRE. Raymond Massey was John Brown in SANTA FE TRAIL and SEVEN ANGRY MEN. But only Peter O'Toole played the same historical figure in two major productions that were made only four years apart, and that showed the character seriously aging.

O'Toole had played King Henry II of England in BECKET (1964) as a young, vibrant monarch who makes the serious mistake of appointing his best friend to the one post that will make them enemies. The period that BECKET encompasses was roughly 1165 to 1171 (when Henry allowed himself to be whipped for the murder of Becket the year before - apparently at his orders). In THE LION IN WINTER (1968) he was King Henry some twelve years later. Henry is now the most powerful monarch in Western Europe, but he has problems of dynastic and political natures.

His power structure in 1183 is dependent on his hold of the marriage dower of his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine. In BECKET, Pamela Brown played Eleanor as a sharp tongued and jealous woman who arranged the murder of her rival Gwendolen (Sian Phillips), on the night Henry was going to have sex with her. Henry (who hates the sight of blood) has a nervous collapse upon seeing the results of Eleanor's activities. In THE LION IN WINTER Eleanor was played by Katherine Hepburn. Now older, she is still a match in terms of political abilities to her husband. He has let her out of her castle prison to visit him and their three surviving sons (Richard, Geoffrey, and John) as well as Princess Alais of France and her brother King Phiip Augustus of France.

Henry's family get-together is not for holiday reasons (although it is occurring at Christmas). He has taken a dower from King Philip's father King Louis for Pincess Alais (Jane Merrow) to marry his oldest son Richard (Anthony Hopkins). But Alais has become the mistress of the monarch, who is considering divorcing Eleanor and starting a "proper" family with his second wife Alais. Richard and his two brothers (John Castle and Nigel Terry) are not happy with this prospect - nor with dynastic ambitions of each other. Of the three sons, Henry favors John (Terry) over Richard, although Richard is the better fighter. The reason is that Richard is the favorite of his mother, and has been implicated in some of her attempts to stir up civil war against Henry. Geoffrey (Castle) has brains but he is untrustworthy and finds that he is constantly dismissed by both parents. And King Philip (Timothy Dalton) is furious that due to the highhanded actions of Henry his father was reduced in power in Europe, and he is forced to report to a man who is technically his vassal due to the French lands that Henry controls.

THE LION IN WINTER had been a Broadway success in the middle 1960s, starring Robert Preston as Henry. The film is a successful transition, with the elderly monarch and his elderly consort tearing at each other in a kind of medieval WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF. O'Toole is wonderful as the still intelligent, vigorous, and bullying monarch he was in BECKET, except now he is facing his own mortality. Hepburn (who won her third Oscar for this film - one year after winning her second for GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER and tying this time with Barbara Streisand for FUNNY GIRL) is able to display a woman capable of any political damage be it encouraging her sons to revolt or threatening future harm to Alais and any child she and Henry may have to torturing Henry with the suggestion that she (Eleanor) slept with Henry's father before they met.

Hopkins' hapless Richard is the most sympathetic of the three sons, with his humiliation when Philip maliciously reveals that Richard is a homosexual (the first time this trait was revealed in any film about Richard the Lion Hearted). Terry's John is properly "pimple faced" and immature on the surface, but showing when he betrays his father that two-faced ability that would lead to his disasters as King. Castle is properly sinister throughout - one realizes that both parents will not suggest him as heir because he'd kill them as soon as he could safely plan it out afterward. Dalton's Philip is galling to O'Toole, as he keeps showing that unlike his father he knows how to harm the British monarchy - by disgracing it's leading hero (Richard), and by simply waiting for time to take it's toll on his enemy Henry. And Merrow is the most sympathetic figure in the film, genuinely loving Henry but finding even he regards her as a dynastic pawn in the end. The movie was that rarity, a sequel as thoughtful and intelligent as the first film had been, and filling in the results of that first film's background and story very well indeed.