Poster of Becket

Becket

Biography, Drama, History

Director: Peter Glenville

Release Date: March 11, 1964

Where to Watch

It is so hard to see movies as they were historically intended and not through my eyes so I will give two interpretations of Becket. The traditional interpretation: a great conversion tale where a man courageously sacrifices his personal pleasures and desires in service to God. My interpretation: a man whose identity is equal to his job whatever that may be, and he does his best to temper the corruption of whatever bureaucracy he belongs to, but will ultimately choose that bureaucracy over his personal convictions of what is right and wrong. He goes from protecting a rapist king to a rapist priest, but is called courageous because he has to lose everything to defend the latter. The movie is at its strongest before it goes to Rome when the portrayal of French and Italian officials becomes caricature and reaches its limits of the era in which the film was made. Numerous historical errors. POSSIBLE SPOILERS As a feminist and a Christian, I paid very close attention to all the scenes in which Becket did his best to divert his king’s lusts and protect those who tried to rise up against the king, but then when it was unavoidable, relented because Becket would never openly disobey Henry II. When he hears that a priest was arrested for corrupting a local girl, initially Becket wants to know if he was guilty; thus giving me the impression that if the priest was guilty, he didn’t care if a secular authority would punish the priest, but he is reminded by a more corrupt priest that as Archbishop, he has to defend the church against all secular power and acts accordingly. It isn’t about God, but power though Becket may have rationalized that he was doing it in service to God.

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