It is a good thing so much of the scenery in Lion in Winter is stone, considering how much it gets chewed here.
No one goes over the top like Peter O'Toole in his prime, and this movie essentially begs for that type of performance. O'Toole's Henry is not merely larger than life, he's Macy Balloon sized larger than life. "Oh God, but I do love being king!" O'Toole bellows at one point, and it is clear O'Toole loves playing one as well. It takes an actress of the caliber of Katherine Hepburn to not disappear alongside a performance like that.
Henry, in love with his mistress Alais who is promised by treaty for the marriage of his oldest surviving son Richard, anxiuos for the succession to the throne for the sake of the empire he has built, calls to a palace in his French possessions his three sons, Richard, a fierce and determined warrior who is his mother's favorite - and a favorite of the King of France, as it turns out - the deep-revolving, ignored and unloved middle son Geoffery, and the dull witted youngest son Johnny, his father's pet and choice for succession. He also temporarliy frees "the Great Bitch" from her prison, his wife, Eleanor of Acquitaine, who he has kept walled up in a castle for ten years, and calls Phillip, the youthful King of France and the son of Eleanor's first husband, in for negotiations. As soon as all five arrive at the castle, they begin to plot with and against and for each other, with Alais, the crown, and Acquitaine as the pawns. No one in tha family likes anyone else, no one is loyal to any one else, and all are willing to betray anyone to win.
Are they so different from any unhappy family, whose uneasy alliances and betrayals occur over subjects less momentous to outsiders than a crown? Well, as Eleanor put it, "what family doesn't have its ups and downs?" All of the major actors - O'Toole and Hepburn, John Castle, a very early Anthony Hopkins and Timothy Daulton, stoop-shouldered, drooling, self pitying Nigel Terry - attack their roles with evident relish. The screenplay sometimes descends to faux profundities and leaden pronouncements, but never for too long. The dialogue sparkles with wit and verbal imagination.
But crowning it all off, of course, are Hepburn and O'Toole. They play off their deep abiding love and deep abiding hatred of each other verbally for the entire movie in scenes that can wander wildly from humor to deep pathos as they find with unerring skill exactly the right way to wound each other.
No one goes over the top like Peter O'Toole in his prime, and this movie essentially begs for that type of performance. O'Toole's Henry is not merely larger than life, he's Macy Balloon sized larger than life. "Oh God, but I do love being king!" O'Toole bellows at one point, and it is clear O'Toole loves playing one as well. It takes an actress of the caliber of Katherine Hepburn to not disappear alongside a performance like that.
Henry, in love with his mistress Alais who is promised by treaty for the marriage of his oldest surviving son Richard, anxiuos for the succession to the throne for the sake of the empire he has built, calls to a palace in his French possessions his three sons, Richard, a fierce and determined warrior who is his mother's favorite - and a favorite of the King of France, as it turns out - the deep-revolving, ignored and unloved middle son Geoffery, and the dull witted youngest son Johnny, his father's pet and choice for succession. He also temporarliy frees "the Great Bitch" from her prison, his wife, Eleanor of Acquitaine, who he has kept walled up in a castle for ten years, and calls Phillip, the youthful King of France and the son of Eleanor's first husband, in for negotiations. As soon as all five arrive at the castle, they begin to plot with and against and for each other, with Alais, the crown, and Acquitaine as the pawns. No one in tha family likes anyone else, no one is loyal to any one else, and all are willing to betray anyone to win.
Are they so different from any unhappy family, whose uneasy alliances and betrayals occur over subjects less momentous to outsiders than a crown? Well, as Eleanor put it, "what family doesn't have its ups and downs?" All of the major actors - O'Toole and Hepburn, John Castle, a very early Anthony Hopkins and Timothy Daulton, stoop-shouldered, drooling, self pitying Nigel Terry - attack their roles with evident relish. The screenplay sometimes descends to faux profundities and leaden pronouncements, but never for too long. The dialogue sparkles with wit and verbal imagination.
But crowning it all off, of course, are Hepburn and O'Toole. They play off their deep abiding love and deep abiding hatred of each other verbally for the entire movie in scenes that can wander wildly from humor to deep pathos as they find with unerring skill exactly the right way to wound each other.