The Darker Ages

LION IN WINTER is one of the best movies ever made. That being said, you should understand that, although it shares that sobriquet with Mary Poppins, there is nothing frothy, light-hearted, or even humorous about this flick. We are seeing a Tennessee Williams story out of the Dark Ages. And, darndest thing, it's mostly the truth.

Henry the Second, King of England, is extremely grumpy. It's 1183, he's fifty years old - an unheard of longevity in his time, and his three surviving sons are all unfit to succeed him. His estranged queen, Eleanore of Aquitaine, favors eldest son Richard. Henry himself favors their youngest, John. Middle son Geoffrey seems to be ignored as a candidate. So Henry calls his family together for a long Christmas reunion that can make your worst family reunion look like Paris in the Liberation. Henry is the first Plantagent King and, if he doesn't select a suitable successor, he might be the last; you start to understand why the family took its name from a noxious weed.

The script is extremely well done. Unlike an enormous number of period pieces of that era (most notably movies about the Crusades or Robin Hood), scriptwriter James Goldman actually knows quite a bit about the history and geography of the time.

Peter O'Toole is Henry II. Katherine Hepburn is Eleanor (but she looks much better than the real Eleanor, who was eleven years older than Henry). Anthony Hopkins plays Richard - not the jovial hero of the Robin Hood movies but a brooding violent young man, not much better adjusted than the character that Hopkins is better identified with. Nigel Terry plays John and you wonder if the Plantagenets had conducted genetic experiments involving rodents (a few years later Terry played a perfectly heroic King Arthur in the excellent EXCALIBUR). Timothy Dalton is King Philip of France. Jane Merrow is Philip's sister Alais, whom Henry keeps dangling as a future queen, either by dumping Eleanor and marrying her himself, or marrying her to his chosen heir. John Castle plays a toughminded Geoffrey.

The excellent photography is accompanied by excellent music by John Barry. I am sorry you have to see it on the small screen, when I was much younger (in 1968) I saw it on the big screen with the high tech stereo. It runs 2 hours and 14 minutes. Although there is no nudity, there is plenty of family friction, so this is not for kids. I'd also say there are no battle scenes but you might put some of these family fights into that category.