A good movie

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since it seemed to have a decent reputation (it is included in the ‘The Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made’ list selected by the New York Times, among other things), I thought I might as well check it out. Well, to be honest, I thought the damned thing was rather messy. In my opinion, it seemed rather foolish to try to cover 5 of his 6 marriages in just 90 minutes of running time. The fact that I saw this movie without subtitles probably didn’t help though. It’s weird because I actually saw every single episodes of ‘The Tudors’ so I was actually quite familiar with the material. It’s too bad because there has always been something quite fascinating about Henry VIII’s convoluted love life. Indeed, it did lead to England breaking from the Roman Catholic Church and the establishment of the Church of England and it’s complete separation from this Church which was something huge at the time. However, it didn’t care much for the approach they chose for this movie. Fortunately, Charles Laughton was so awesome though. I have to admit that I discovered Laughton only recently but the guy keeps impressing me each time I see him. Seriously, he has become one of my favorite actors, no less than that. In this case, he actually really looked like Henry VIII which was definitely not the case when Jonathan Rhys Meyers was playing the same character in ‘The Tudors’. But, above all, he once again completely disappeared in this character and he even won an Academy Award for this performance at the time. Even though none of the wives were really developed, Henry did go through a whole range of feelings, Laughton was definitely up to the task and the guy was quite spellbinding to behold. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, it was still a decent watch and I think it is worth a look, if only for Charles Laughton’s fine work.