A fictitious drama based on the predicament of Thomas More, in 16th-century England, who would not give his explicit support to King Henry VIII's establishment of the Church of England so that he could remarry.
This is a case which fits very neatly into T.S. Eliot's theory of objective correlative. In the essay "Hamlet and His Problems", Eliot charges Shakespeare's play "Hamlet" of lacking the so-called "objective correlative", meaning that his source material did not possess the right elements to convey the concepts he intended to. I do not exactly agree (and perhaps do not exactly understand) why that would apply to "Hamlet", but I think it does apply to A Man for All Seasons. The real Thomas More, a religious fanatic, is not adequate material for a play or movie purporting to discuss the supremacy of individual conscience. Even if you totally ignore that this is supposed to be a historical movie, it doesn't work, precisely because certain facts remain faithful to History. The result is a Frankenstein monster, albeit a surprisingly watchable Frankenstein monster. Its parts are infinitely better than its whole.
Rating: 63
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