Friendship and Honor in “Becket” (1964)

In Jean Anouilh’s 1959 play “Becket,” the titular character seems at first to be a Saxon collaborationist to the Norman rule of England, and a man who has sacrificed his personal honor to his friendship with King Henry II and, as he puts it, “good living.” This will change when he becomes Archbishop of Canterbury, only to realize that he is enchanted by the “honor of God,” leading him to to defend at any cost the prerogatives of the Church against those of the state. When is honor more important than friendship? Wes & Erin discuss the 1964 film version of the play, with Peter O’Toole and Richard Burton, about a 12th-century high-profile bromance-gone-bad. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:11 Wes: In Jean Anouil's 1959 play Becket, the titular character seems at first to be a Saxon collaborationist to the Norman rule of England and a man who has sacrificed his personal honor to his friendship with King Henry ii and, as he puts it, good living. This will change when he becomes Archbishop of Canterbury, only to realize that he is enchanted by the honor of God leading him to defend, at any cost, the prerogatives of the Church against those of the state. When is honor more important than friendship? In this episode, we discuss the 1964 film version of the play of Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton about a 12th century high profile romance gone bad. This is Wes Alwan. 0:54 Erin: This is Erin O'Luanaigh, and you're listening to Subtext. 1:00 Wes: Okay, so today we're talking about the film Becket, which is based on a 1959 play by Jean Anouilh called Becket or the Honor of God. And this is set in 12th century England. The most exciting time. 1:18 Erin: Don't knock it. 1:19 Wes: No, no. Actually, what's interesting is Anouilh got the idea for this play reading Augustine Thierry's history of the conquest of England by the Normans, which I think is 12 volumes. But he picked up one of the volumes at a used bookstore, I think, just because it was green and he wanted something green on his bookshelf. There was no burning interest in the Norman Conquest, but I downloaded and took a look at that book a little bit, and then I thought, you know, the Norman Conquest is really fascinating. We think of it 1066 as the beginning. It's not the beginning of England, but it's beginning at the beginning of what? I mean, we're on the way to the English language. 2:00 Erin: I think you're right. When I was a kid, I memorized all of the monarchs of England in order, and it was too difficult to get Ethelred and all the Saxon kings under my belt. So I decided that 1066 on is what I would count as the English monarchy. So as far as my historical efforts are concerned, that's kind of what I always thought of and what I was always taught as being the big bang of an English self concept, maybe, which has always been entangled. Right. With other ethnicities coming in and actually being the ruling class, while the native people are of a different ethnicity or a different tribal background. 2:39 Wes: Yeah, the thing that I hadn't given a lot of thought to, I knew that the Normans had come in and conquered and taken over and were speaking French as the language of the court. But I hadn't given a lot of thought to this. What is basically started as an occupation and the subjugation right of the Saxons, and then became gradually a new people with a new language and culture predicated on that integration of the two, which took, think, hundreds of years. And this play is set about 100 years after the Norman Conquest, and it concerns the friendship between Henry II and Thomas Becket, who, in the account of Thierry, and therefore of Anouilh, is a Saxon. This turns out, by the way, to be historically inaccurate. And Anouilh found that out after he wrote the play, but decided to keep that in because that's one of the more interesting aspects of the play, which is that Henry II has befriended and raised up first to be his chancellor and then to be archbishop. This person who's supposed to be one of the underclass, supposed to be a Saxon, which is a fascinating plot point. 3:57 Erin: I wonder what that adds to the film, though, because I know that there's, in the story between Becket and Henry, there is some tension having to do with the fact that Henry makes Thomas and then Thomas betrays him. And I know that there was a class distinction, obviously, between them, as there's going to be between any, you know, king and commoner or even king and, you know, relatively lowly aristocrat. I wonder what this distinction, which in the film read to me as a racial metaphor, maybe what that adds to the drama of the film and what I think is already a really compelling story. I mean, this is historically a really great moment for high drama. I guess. I just wonder, like, I knew going in that that Becket was a Norman. And so the fact that it made so much of this Saxon heritage kind of confused me. I. I just. I wasn't sure what it was doing, what it was illustrating about the nature of their relationship that was so worthwhile that it needed to be expressed in these really black and white terms. Norman, Saxon. 5:04 Wes: Yeah, I think you're right. This occurred to me as well. Even though Anouilh thought it was important to leave in. I'm not sure how much is really that necessary to the film. I think Anouilh himself was accused of being a collaborator. And by the way, the film is. It's a screenplay based on the play, and we're discussing the film, and it's a screenplay that won Best Screenplay Adaptation, won the Academy Award for that, and involved significant changes. I think is largely faithful to the play, but it involves some additions and some cutting. But, yeah, Anouilh himself was accused of being a collaborator with the Germans during World War II. I think he was initially imprisoned and then got out and was fully willing to work as a playwright and intellectual during the German occupation. So I think part of what he's thinking about with the Norman occupation of England is the German occupation of France. But again, I think you're right. I'm not sure that it's all that essential to the film. In the beginning, we get this question of honor. So King Henry is at his bath and Becket is attending him. And they have this conversation about how he reconciles his honor with being a quote, unquote, collaborator. That's what Henry says to him. And Henry is very fast and loose with subjects which have a lot of potential for humiliation of Becket. Right. His subservience to Henry and the fact that he's part of the suppressed underclass and all that. So the way Becket responds is to say that honor is the concern of the living. It's a private matter. It's an idea. And he loves good living. He makes himself out to be a pragmatist who loves good living. And good living is Norman. He loves life. And the Saxon is basically brought up to be slaughtered. So he's doing the thing that will keep him alive. And honor is not all that relevant. He makes this argument, which is really weird, which is that, you know, you can't be honorable if you're dead. And Henry says, well, there's something that's not quite right about that reasoning. And of course, Henry is right. Sticking to one's honor may lead to you getting killed or executed often does at this time. Right. So the point is to be honorable up to the point where you die for that, where you're martyred for that. It's kind of irrelevant whether you can be honorable after you're dead if you are dishonorable while you're living. Right. So Beckett's argument seems to be, well, I'm going to be dishonorable while I'm living because I can't be honorable when I'm dead. So it doesn't make much sen. But then at the end of that scene, we get from Becket this talk about introducing forks into the royal feasts. And this is the beginning of the idea that Becket is a kind of. Ironically, he's kind of a civilizing force for all these people who basically behave like savages. He's a civilizing force in several different ways. And that fact and the pragmatism in the beginning, it'll change. But the pragmatism seemed to be connected. But just going back to your point, the conflict that arises between Henry and Becket, which does have something to do with honor once he's the Archbishop and has discovered a different kind of honor, honor of God, that conflict doesn't really have a lot to do with his being a Saxon. There's, in fact, nothing really very little in the film is made of that conflict. Right. Very little is made of the fact that Henry kills Beckett's girlfriend, basically, or causes her to commit suicide by being about to rape her. And several other reasons that Becket would have for having legitimate grievance with Henry. Those aren't really the motivating force in the film. So I think your point is well taken. Maybe he could have cut it out. 9:03 Erin: There's a suggestion that the Saxons are maybe more civilized than the Normans. You know, there's this sort of topsy turvy element to it. Of course, Becket is introducing the fork as a Florentine invention. It's anachronistic. The introduction of the fork to England didn't happen for hundreds of years. So that, to me was laugh. Like I laughed out loud. It's second only to this moment in the Passion of the Christ when they credit Jesus with inventing the dining room table. It's absolutely ridiculous. 9:36 Wes: Because you need a place where people can say grace. 9:39 Erin: Yeah. You only sit on one side of it. 9:42 Wes: Right. Exactly. 9:44 Erin: Anyway, I guess. Okay, well, the truth is gonna come out now because I will say not to turn this into the Siskel and Ebert podcast, but I hated this movie. I hated it. 9:54 Wes: Okay? 9:54 Erin: It was difficult for me to get through, and I'm really interested in talking about it, and I'm really interested in hearing what you love about it, because this is a film you were interested in doing. I think it's safe to reveal that to the listener. But, you know, I had always thought that I had seen this, but now I'm certain I haven't because one element of the movie would have bothered me so much that it would have stuck in my memory, you know? So I should preface this by saying that I really love the story, the historical story of Thomas Becket, and I love Murder in the Cathedral. And just reading about the history, or at least I did when I was a kid, probably now, if I went back and reread it, it would be a real snooze. But anyway, I think that that's probably at the root of my problem with the film. This Norman Saxon conflict, which is sort of trumped up various other historical inaccuracies and these moments, like the fork moment, where it turns into, like, an opportunity for someone to get a fork in their butt or whatever. Right. The food fighting scene. So the historical inaccuracies or that kind of flourish with the fork really distracted me, and none of them seemed necessary in a story that was already really packed with drama from the beginning. So I didn't see what purpose they served. 11:04 Wes: Yeah. So the Saxon thing comes from the Thierry history. He just. He read the 30 pages that involved Becket, and that was what Thierry said, and then he didn't get that fact check checked until it was too late. Yeah. The fork I don't know about. I'm not as bothered by the historical inaccuracy. 11:22 Erin: There were many other things that I probably didn't notice. Yeah. I mean, the. The thing that would have stuck out to me, which is how I knew that I hadn't seen the film, was its treatment of Eleanor of Aquitaine and even of Henry's mother. So Henry was very close with his mother. His mother was a very formidable woman and politician, if you will, you know, in quotes, in her own right. And the reduction of both of those women to these kind of idiotic harpies, I mean, you know, they do say some pieces of criticism that. That Henry should pay more attention to, but I suppose what that diminishing of those two figures and really of any other woman in the film, to exclude them from a possible relationship with Henry, whether it be killing them off, having them kill themselves, you know, mischaracterizing various relationships, it almost made Becket look like the only viable romantic option for Henry in all of England. I just wonder again why that needed to be. It's turning this relationship that actually has a lot of nuance and complexity into something that's very, to me, sort of ham handed, very stark. Right. The same thing as this Saxon Norman conflict where it's like, oh, I can't be friends with you because you're a Saxon, but I'm friends with you anyway because you're a Saxon. You know, that kind of stark dichotomy seemed very similar to me in terms of the way that it treated any other relationship in Henry's life. So that Becket was his only friend and his only love interest. Right. And the loss of that represented. Whereas I think the reality was that Henry had a lot going on in his life. Right. And I think that you didn't have to make Becket the figure upon which Henry hung all of his love and friendship. And to be this catch all for all of Henry's emotions. It didn't have to all hinge on Becket. There could have been a portrayal of the complexities of all the intrigue that was going on and much more. You know, Becket was doing lots of things that were really pissing Henry off until the end. So, you know, it could have been a more fun, almost cat and mouse game. There could have been a great scene in which, you know, not to totally rewrite the film or to argue that I could have written this better, but, you know, it would have been interesting to bring Eleanor in as the formidable woman that she was and have her perhaps align with Becket. Or, you know, you could take a lot of historical liberties, I think, so long as you do it in a way that I think gets to a deeper truth about a historical situation, or if it brings something out about the real nature of the relationship, even if it does so in a sort of compressed way, I think I would have taken it a little bit more seriously and I would have forgiven some of those inaccuracies if it lent itself to more complexity. I suppose what I'm saying is that these inaccuracies shut the film down for me. 14:13 Wes: Yeah. I mean, I think it's best to look at it as fiction with a bit of a historical backdrop. And the focus, really is this relationship between Henry and Becket, which, when I first saw the film, well, I should say this is a film that my mom was into, and it was around when I was a kid, in a way, I think as a kid, I thought, well, this is kind of a boring adult thing. But the murder of Becket in the church, or the killing of Becket in the church, in the end, it always made this impression on me. And then when I saw it as an adult, I was just. And this was years ago, saw it for the first time as an adult. I was delighted by the language. I also found the relationship between Becket and Henry really interesting. And I think there's something there about the chemistry between Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole that's going on. But what's interesting about it is not really principally the class thing that is brought in. The class thing really, in a way, doesn't matter. We have an odd couple relationship, first of all, we have two men who are. Well, at least Henry has this passionate love for Becket, but Henry is also a impulsive sociopath, basically. And Becket is a little harder to figure out in the beginning. Is he a man of principle? Is he the amoral pragmatist that he portrays himself to be? It turns out not right. He will turn out to be someone who is entirely devoted to principle and in particular to the church and the honor of God as opposed to the supremacy of the state, where the state in a way, comes to represent the whims and impulsiveness of Henry II and his brutality. But in the beginning, what he does is more pragmatic. So, for instance, when they are on the hunt and they take shelter in the hut of some peasants and Henry wants to basically rape the girl that's in the hut, Becket is a restraining force, but he's not a die hard stickler for principle in the sense that he would get away from this sociopathic, terrible person. He's there as a moderating force and obviously he's not going to be able to moderate all of it. He's only going to be able to do a little. I'm sure Henry is engaging in all sorts of crimes that Becket is standing by and can't do much about, including the attempted rape of his own, what seems like his girlfriend and then her suicide. So. And he seems a stoic in the face of this. And there are some things about even Gwendolyn, this woman who ended up committing suicide, kind of intimates. And there are several points in the film where it's intimated he's not really all that capable of love in some personal sense. He finds it in God, but he's a little bit too, what's the word? Abstract or stoic in a way. So you have this very passionate, powerful person who loves Becket, loves this person who's very, very different. And then the attachment that Becket has to Henry in the beginning is a little more unclear. It's not entirely cynical. The whole backdrop for this, the social environment, is complete cynicism, whether it's people in the church or people in the government, people in power. Right. They even. They have trouble even comprehending Becket, that anyone would behave that way except out of cynical motives. This is what interests me. Becket is hard to define in the beginning, and then he takes on this new form later on in the film where he is willing to have this enormous conflict with Henry, this man he's been serving over principle that we didn't even know he cared about early on. 18:09 Erin: What makes Becket such an interesting person, historically speaking as well, is the fact that no one can really trace the roots of this conversion that happens. And I think to this day, lots of people read cynical motives into. I mean, I guess it depends on what you think about the church or whether or not you're English, you Know, I think the English maybe have a much more complicated relationship, or English Anglicans, anyway, have a much more complicated relationship with Becket probably, than someone from the States whose Catholic is going to have. But I think that this curiosity at the heart of the figure of Becket is really well portrayed by Burton because he's someone onto whom you can map any possible number of explanations or motives why he's behaving the way that he is. The film obviously guides your hand, and later we see that it's a genuine conversion. But I do wonder about whether this is the same person. You know, I think that's what I'm most interested in. Is this the same person from the first half of the film as the second half of the film? The roots were there, the sort of character, and not in terms of character morality, but like the character traits are there in part one and in Part two, Or does some truly supernatural, in the religious sense, a sort of supernatural conversion happen that changes the character between parts one and two? I was looking at the opening scene of the film again, and Henry is still struggling to understand Beckett's conversion. Beckett's change of heart, his conversion and breakup at the same time, break up with Henry, and he wonders if it was Gwendolyn, if that was like, the moment at which this break occurred. Which is really funny because I wouldn't locate it there necessarily. Right. I mean, maybe the film does for us, and the film points to that moment as being an explanation. Of course, it's entirely ahistorical, but points to that as being the breaking point between the two men. 20:03 Wes: Logically, you would think it would, but it doesn't seem to. That's one of the interesting things for me about the film is nothing is made of Gwendolyn. Right. And nothing is made of being a Saxon in a contemporary film. The Gwendolyn thing and the class thing would be centered and Beckett's resentment based on that would be centered, but they really fall to the wayside. You can give a cynical interpretation where Beckett's not really concerned about defending the church and is really concerned about those other things. But I think that runs against the way the film goes. 20:33 Erin: But I'm just wondering about his relationship with Gwendolyn because. Or what that reveals about his character, because once, you know, she kind of asks if she could see Becket again after Henry will have his way with her that night, and Becket says no, I don't know. Does that represent rigidity or not? On the one hand, it represents a certain kind of rigidity. On the other hand, he must not have been as rigid in his love for her as we might think. So that was the most inscrutable moment in the film for me, trying to reconcile the deep love that I think it was, trying to show that Becket had for this woman and how devastated he was over this impending moment, while also kind of having to have a poker face, being affected by her suicide, but also essentially telling her that once she's raped by Henry, she's going to be either damaged goods or Henry's property, that Becket can no longer have any. So I wondered where a certain rigidity, which I read into Beckett's character. He's uncompromising. That's part of what breaks him and Henry up in the second half of the film. Right. I wondered where that uncompromising nature was tending to in that Gwendolyn episode. 21:53 Wes: Yeah, it's interesting because they have an exchange where she says something to the effect that if the Welsh had won the war, she would have married a man of her own race and at her father's castle. And then later on, she'll relent and say she could have just as easily ended up marrying Becket and says, you've taken my heart before you captured my body. He has a sort of reaction to that, doesn't say anything. And she asks if she said something wrong. And he says, somehow I can never support the idea of being loved. So there's a lot of ambiguity in the beginning of the film that goes away in the second half of the film after he becomes archbishop. He seems to care about this woman and to be kind. But on the other hand, there doesn't seem to be a strong passion there. At least that's what he says right about himself. And there are other parts of the film where it's similarly intimated that he can't love. You know, Henry will accuse him of that. So Henry's all about, I love this man, I love him, I love him, I love him. Just never shuts up about how much he loves Becket, even when he's trying to kill him. And Becket is always playing it close to the vest, doing things that are basically decent, like preventing people from being raped if he can, or preventing the raping and pillaging of an entire French town, the slaughter of a French town, because Henry's barons just want to do it for fun, but it never seems to be out of love. I think when he becomes religious, he can combine his principledness with love in the sense of love of God. Not love of people, but love of God is where Becket can go but his relationship to people is based not so much on personal passion as on something ethical. Although Henry accuses him of being aesthetic. Right. Which goes along with the amoral aspect of him that seems to be there. So the aesthetic, in a way, is premoral. Or for a philosopher like Nietzsche, it would be a superior form of the superior system of values. But for German philosopher and poet Schiller, the aesthetic is on its way to morality. Right. When people start decorating their swords and not just slaughtering each other with them, they are on their way to some higher relationship to the world and to other people in which they can treat people with respect and restraint. And that's where Becket seems to be. This ability, it's almost like an aesthetically based respect for other people that hasn't risen yet to the point of having some sort of transcendent justification or basis which it will get in God. So he has the seeds of it. But I don't think he quite understands himself in the beginning or why he behaves how he behaves. And it's ironically, Henry, by giving him this title and this power, who allows Becket to come to this sort of self realization about what's actually motivating him and where his passion lies, if we could call it passion. So I'm saying, anyway, the scene with Gwendolyn, I think in a way that the idea seems to be that he can't really feel passionately about a woman. He has to wait to fully find God before he can feel that. 25:06 Erin: Yeah, that's really interesting. I'm thinking about what you said about the aesthetic as being like, on the way to. What was it? Morality. 25:14 Wes: On the way to the ethical. 25:15 Erin: On the way to the ethical morality. In the same way, I'm thinking about Becket's regard for John, that Saxon monk who tries to attack him and who he then is able to convert to his side because of his really convenient habit of praying to Jesus out loud 25:34 Wes: and being overheard. 25:35 Erin: Yeah, right. Yeah. At first you think, okay, this is just because this is like, it's so stagey. So you think, okay, this is just a play being filmed. I guess they could have done this in voiceover, though. Like, why aren't they doing this in voiceover when you first hear him praying out loud and then you realize, oh, because it becomes a plot point. And if they're. If they're going to do it in voiceover, then John can't overhear him. So in the same way as you say that the aesthetic is on the way to ethics, I wonder if For Beckett's relationship with John, if self love, if you will, is like on the way to love, that Becket seems to be interested in John before his conversion because he sees himself in John. Yeah, he says that what we might make of that. Yeah. And if that is what's motivating him. At first we wonder if his motives are entirely self interested from the beginning. Right. If he. He does have a soft spot for making sure that women aren't gonna be taken advantage of by Henry, who is, you know, in real life, was also a horrific human being. So we wonder if he's just playing a role to keep himself in power, to keep his relationship with Henry going, even as he's sort of repulsed by Henry's behavior. I'm not sure that I buy the genuineness of their friendship from the beginning. And I think there's obviously a reading of the film which can be, as you say, entirely cynical in which Becket was never friends with Henry and was just using him for some sort of political means. So maybe Beckett's self regard is what motivates his behavior in the beginning and what the turning point actually is is not the conversion, but in seeing himself, but in another person. The moment in which he is able to extend himself to really caring about another person actually happens when he sees John as a younger version of himself. I think that's a bit of a stretch, but I think there's something, and I think that it's this thread that runs through the film to a certain extent, insofar as the film is concerned with this real homoerotic undertone, you know, where Henry is really in love with Becket. And that seems much healthier than whatever Beckett's doing, which he sort of seems like he's in love with. And I'm talking about the figure in the film, of course, not the historical figure. But Becket seems to be like really in love with himself. And I think that's something maybe within the psychology of being uncompromising and believing yourself to be really right. Am I wrong there? 28:05 Wes: You could always point to the narcissism of the principled behavior. Right. I love my own morality, but that's a big subject. Is that a fair critique? I mean, at least probably, partially, but. But on the other hand, people can be principled. 28:22 Erin: And I think that a lot of people read the historical Becket as being motivated by that impulse. You know, those who want to read real life Becket as being a cynical figure or an arrogant figure would read his uncompromisingness as being a sort of self regard early on in the second part of the film, his sort of post conversion spends a lot of time looking at and adoring this crucifix. And I wonder if there's. You know, I just want to say that I'm not sure that I believe that Becket in this film is motivated by self regard. I think that's a possible reading, but I think there's also this reading wherein Beckett's regard and maybe real love for Henry to the extent that he's capable of loving, is transferred to the person of Christ. And that that's kind of symbolized by this crucifix that figures prominently in some of the scenes. 29:17 Wes: We can give a cynical interpretation of Becket's conversion, so to speak, but nothing is really made of it in the film if that's true. Right. So there's nowhere to go with that. And, you know, it's more interesting to me as a case study and someone becoming uncompromisingly principled and the way in which the roots of that are there in a less principled pragmatism or the kind of pragmatism where the principles are more in the beginning. You get him being loyal to the king and serving the king, and there's something about service which seems to attract Becket. He will even towel off the king and say, nobility lies in the man, my dear, not the towel. Because the king points to the potential humiliation of Becket being the towel boy. Right. And then there's the conversation about what honor involves and the fact that he's a collaborator and all that. And then you get a scene after that where Henry is gonna surprise Becket at court by making him chancellor and for a very cynical reason, to support him in trying to extract money from the Church for his wars. And Becket goes along with it. He's surprised at first and tries to wriggle out of it a bit, but then takes it on and is willing to fully support Henry in that project. Then you get the hut with the girl, you get the Gwendolyn incident, her suicide, after which Henry is completely concerned about, comes back crying, basically because he's worried he's ruined his friendship with Beck. You're not going to love me anymore. I'm never going to know what you're thinking. And then there's the saving the French town from the assassination attempt which you were pointing to. Right. When John Saxon tries to assassinate him is another potential turning point. But as you look at all these early plot points, each one of them kind of builds up. So I think you're right. I think the assassination attempt contributes significantly. And Becket says, this is basically, I'm coming face to face with the ghost of me when I was young. And the suggestion there. And maybe we can retrieve some relevance for the Saxon thing, but the suggestion there is that he, like John, was basically a member of the Saxon version of the ira. Right, Norman's out. Get the Normans out. We're gonna do whatever we can. And then he became a collaborator, something that marks him as being extremely unprincipled, unless you conceive of it as someone who's trying to be a moderating force or change things from within, or someone who's just confused. And that goes to my reading of his motivations, you know, versus the purely cynical reading. I think there's an element of truth to the cynical reading and concept of self, love and all that. But I think Becket, in a way, doesn't understand what's motivating him. And he'll say that later on when he is talking to God and saying, you know, I found honor in this in the beginning. He's behaving at a surface level as a dishonorable collaborator and wrestling to some extent with that problem, even though he does it very quietly in a way. Henry does all that for him, basically by teasing him and saying, look at what you're doing. And then that scene about the aesthetics comes right after the assassin scene, where Henry is saying, look, you know, look at this girl's ass. That's real aesthetics. It looks like an apple. It's round as an apple, something like that. And in contrast to what Becket has, and this is what Henry says, you love work, don't you? Henry says to Becket, if you love anything, I love doing what I have to do and doing it well. You'd be as efficient against me as for me, wouldn't you? Henry replies, if fate had arranged it that way, says Becket. So he's. He's honest about how the happenstance nature of their relationship and the happenstance nature of his loyalty to the king. And then the king says, so what in most people is morality in you? It's just an exercise in. What's the word? Aesthetics, says Becket. Yes, that's the word. Always aesthetics. And then he says, my version of aesthetics is the body of a woman. Which, of course, is precisely not aesthetics. That's appetite, that's lust. And the aesthetic, the reason why it's on the way to the morals, because it raises us above that we become interested in form, not in exploiting objects and consuming them, but in the formal nature of objects when we have a response to something as beautiful. So in the beginning, it's all confusion, and I'm like, what's going on in Beckett's head? It's very opaque. But the king, in a way, gives Becket, I think, an idea which is going to be the seed of something bigger, and it's going to be the seed of the downfall of their relationship, which is that what in most people's morality in you is aesthetics. But aesthetics can become morality. And then it's not long after that, right, that he makes him archbishop and really seals the fate of their friendship. The motives of Becket in the beginning of the film are opaque, and there's little hints of the material that might serve the purpose of the very hardcore principle thing that he does in the second part of the film. But it's all jumbled and confused, so. Which is what I found very interesting about the film. 34:29 Erin: So, yeah, I think you're helping me articulate what I think is my real impression of the film and not one of these other alternate theories that I was sort of exercising as potential motivations. I think maybe more than anything, I mean, I think that the film is portraying Becket, obviously, as having, as you say, this inherent aesthetic sen. But even more than that, or even more interesting than that, is this other idea you're getting at, which is. 34:53 Wes: And that's what, by the way, the fork is about. Manners are one area where aesthetics and morality are kind of obviously mixed. But anyway, so there's the civilizing element, but it's more aesthetically focused. 35:05 Erin: That's good. I think that another, maybe even more interesting, maybe something that I believe is that we don't know what's happening in Becket because Becket doesn't know what's happening in Becket. Right? Because, in fact, what is happening within Becket is a total mystery. There is a logical illogic to the fact that any human being might make a choice called, quote, unquote, moral. And of course, Christianity would point out that any moral act, like anything that a human being does that can be called good, is simply God moving within us, right? Operating us with, like, you have to, in fact, good word for this play, right? You have to collaborate with God in order to be able to do that. But there's something inherently frustrating about that, I think, especially when you're a kid and you're learning about this, because it's like, oh, the only thing that you're really capable of doing, doing on your own is behaving badly. That, too, might be considered the operation of various Vices working within you, or the devil, or both, however you might conceive of in terms of what your idea of supernatural forces might be. But within Christianity, there's the idea that the only time that you can ever achieve anything is in collaboration with God or in allowing God to work in you. And so the mysteriousness of that and the inherent lack of agency that implies to a certain extent, makes any good act that anyone might perform in a way fundamentally mysterious and fundamentally supernatural. Right. So whatever Becket does in the first half of the film that might be good is perhaps as mysterious as anything he does once he becomes archbishop. But I like this idea that you're saying that it's all kind of a mystery at the beginning. And then there's a more. Maybe we can argue that the only change that happens in the second half of the film is that Becket accepts the illogic or the mystery of what we might call God's grace more consciously and less begrudgingly or in a less confused way, like it has an outlet that is just slightly more conscious than it was in the first half of the film. 37:06 Wes: Yeah, it's interesting because he's already undergone one conversion in the opposite direction, in a way, right from the. A member of the Saxon underground resistance to being a collaborator. So a decrease in honor and principledness, it seems like. But he's on his way to another reversal in which it's no longer nationalistic pride or something like that that would be the motivator, but religion, God, Christianity, nevertheless, that conversion to being ultra principled makes him impenetrable to others, you know, in the way that he's impenetrable to us in the beginning, to the audience in the beginning of the film. He becomes impenetrable to everyone else over the course of the film because even the pope and the cardinals can't comprehend what it would mean to do what Becket is doing. You know, I think one of the cardinals says that to the pope. That man Becket smacks of too much sincerity. It's a strategy like any other, or he's completely devoted to his. His own advancement. So they read his holier than thou attitude as being completely cynical, but of course, that's because they themselves are cynical. And the Church has already been compromised, it seems, by the state. So on one level, Becket is trying to preserve the prerogatives of the Church over and against the state when it comes to the trial. You know, the ability for the Church to handle the malfeasances of its priests and not have the state intervene. But the way the power of the Church is maintained is much more collaborative and involves the Pope. Right. Being willing to take a bribe, essentially money, money from the king. And, and as the Pope puts it, the Church must exist peacefully within the framework of the state, not by hot headed and intemperate methods. Which is an interesting accusation against Becket given that he seems so sober and that that's meant to contrast very markedly with the hotheadedness of Henry. So he's, you know, the Pope will say to him, you've proved your moral worth, but you've split the Church of England into two parties. And Becket says, you know, if I'm wrong, I'm repentant. And the Pope says, well, that doesn't solve the problem. The Pope is the pragmatist now, not Becket. So the state, and because the Church has become such a temporal power, it understands that it's the Pope and cardinals and everyone else seems to, they seem to understand the world in terms of power, even though not questioning the fact that religion is actually important. And it's not the kind of cynicism in which they don't really believe in God. But this is all an act. That's not what it is. It's just that their comprehension of the world, even for the religious establishment is only through and filter, you know, feel free to disagree with me. But happens through this lens of power politics. So Becket becomes something that is impenetrable, incomprehensible to others, that even if it is complete narcissism and he's in love with his own virtue, or it's that he's just simply principled and that he found honor in God and loves God. And either way, this is not the way anyone is functioning. Right. In a sense, they're all collaborators. Collaboration is just the name of the game. And Becket thought he understood that, thought he was okay with that. It turned out not to be. 40:38 Erin: Yeah, that's really interesting. My understanding of the real life history, of course it's very complicated. But the Pope did encourage Becket to be more moderate in his approach to this church versus state dilemma. And in fact there were many in the Church in England at the time who were also, you know, I think the concern was that, as is suggested in the film, that church courts were dealing too leniently with real crimes. So there were many in the Church at the time, from what I understand in the little bit of research I was able to do before we recorded, I used to know a lot more about this When I was super interested in this, in this time period. But I've forgotten a lot. I think I read parts of the Clarendon Constitution and stuff like that to try and really figure out what was going on and what the real bones of contention were between Becket and Henry. I think that this invention of this Lord Gilbert issue in the film is a pure invention. It's what I was able to find out, but it sort of illustrates one potential conflict that might have come up. Anyway, my understanding is that there were plenty within the church who also wanted to find a sort of middle way or a solution in which to better achieve a balance between the criminal and church courts. And so it's interesting the ways in which the film treats collaboration in this kind of black and white way, whereas maybe, arguably, or some would argue in real life that Beckett's lack of compromise might have actually been bad for the Church, like he was seeing things a bit too starkly. 42:07 Wes: The real Becket, I think, is very likely and nothing like this fictionalized version. The research that I did on this was through Wikipedia. I downloaded a lot of Norman Conquest books because I suddenly got interested, and of course, I didn't have time to read them. 42:20 Erin: But the contrast is interesting because in the film, it's all poeticized. But what in the film looks like, oh, he's finally not collaborating with other people, he's sticking to his guns and everybody else. In every other character, collaboration is associated with. With corruption. Whereas what I'm maybe trying to say is that in real life, I think these issues were more complicated in Beckett's day. I think they're more complicated today. I just think it's interesting the way that the film is underscoring this sharp division between collaboration and principle. Whereas most often, I think, in our own lives, we have to learn to collaborate, right? We have to learn to be more compromising and less uncompromising. Right. And I'm wondering if in the film, Beckett's behavior can be interpreted as a kind of a madness. In fact, in the film, the crime that precipitates this break is really horrible. And maybe you think to yourself, like, okay, this person does deserve to be tried. And anyway, I keep referring to the real life history because of the fact that I think it makes such an interesting contrast to the way that the film is choosing to tease certain of these elements out. And I'm hoping that it's revealing something about the trut choices that the playwright made in thinking about what to highlight from the story or what to sort of isolate from the story and whether or not. That could be illustrative about the film's themes, but I'm not sure if that's doing something. 43:48 Wes: I mean, I don't know what's in the Thierry history, but we know that the whole Saxon thing is wrong, and he got that from there. But I don't know if he also got some alternate account of Becket, but it looks like probably what happened between Becket and Henry in real life was just a big power struggle. And that one historian, Josiah Cox Russell, according to Wikipedia, said, basically, Becket was this vain, ambitious, and overly political person. That could have been an interesting story in and of itself. Right? That story about this personal relationship between them, and then they get in a pissing match and neither is willing to back down. And Becket was just excommunicating people left and right, you know, Right. Just all the king's people. And the king was getting pissed off and harassing Beckett's people, you know, and it was a big problem for the Church. And Pope put an interdict on England and to get Henry to negotiate again, all this stuff going down. And I think ultimately what got Becket killed was he couldn't resist excommunicating some more people, you know, his tit for tat. And then he finally got murdered. And it could have worked out. People had been reasonable, and maybe Henry was the more. Actually turned out to be the more pragmatic and reasonable one in real life. But what the playwright seems to want to do is use the historical background as a way to amplify this idea of a personal relationship between an authority like Henry, like. So this temporal, worldly, personal relationship that involves subjection and absolute power, almost. So the king has absolute power over his subjects. How is he going to be friends with any one of them? And especially the kind of intense love that he has for Becket. And again, accentuated by the Saxon Norman thing. And then the question is, the development is from that relationship to another relationship of subjection, in a sense, right to God, to a transcendent or to some transcendent principle for one's behaviors. So Becket can be loyal to Henry, and there's something proto moral in that. And he can be interested in forks and aesthetics and preventing rape and basic decency in various proto moral behaviors. And it may have something to do with this idea of service to power, but he doesn't find morality in principle per se, until it's subjection to a transcendent principle, not a more imminent worldly, aesthetic principle, something like that. So history is kind of discarded in the service of that project, I think. And then the question is, I think, you know, you ask a good question, which is, well, is that right? Is that reasonable to do what Becket did? You know, so even if we put aside the historical thing and just look at it within the context of the play, isn't he just being crazy? Hasn't he gone too far? Is that what is required of us? Is that morality? Is that principle? Or is that just a complete failure to implement moral principles within the real world, which is what we have to do. Right. We're not in the kingdom of heaven. We have to make it work on the ground, so to speak. 47:05 Erin: It reminds me a lot of Billy Budd, actually. 47:07 Wes: Yeah, actually, I was reminded of it too. Yeah. 47:09 Erin: Just that idea that the tools that you might have to work with, you might have an idea that there's always going to be a rigidity in the way that you apply them, but in fact, you have to be really flexible. Or maybe not. I mean, you know, obviously, Billy Budd has at least two possible interpretations. I think that ultimately, what's his name? Who's the captain? His inflexibility is presented as being a tragedy. It's interesting that here it's presented as being a triumph in situations which are really not dissimilar to each other. I think it depends on context, but that very context is exactly what both of those characters would disregard. So I just want to return, though, to Henry, because I do think he's an interesting character. I think that O'Toole is just so hammy in this film. It was really hard to take him seriously. And in fact, it leaned toward camp for me, especially the latter half of the film. Or when they were meeting on the beach, one of them should have come out of the surf like Bo Derek or something. 48:03 Wes: But on that note, let's transition to post script and discuss the alternate ways. And Peter O'Toole, because I was just thinking when you said that before, right before that I was thinking about Peter o' Toole's charisma. But, yeah, it's over. It's over the top. So let's discuss that in Postscript. 48:24 Erin: Sounds good. All right, thank you, thank you. 48:35 Wes: [email protected] subtext Also, this podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. airwavemedia.com airwavemedia.com.