It’ll actually be more of an adaptation of the Jean Anouilh play, produced in 1959, than a remake of the 1964 film starring Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole as Thomas a’ Becket and King Henry II, respectively. That film earned 11 Oscar noms, including a win for Best Writing.
Speaking of writing Oscars, scribe William Monahan, who’ll write/direct the new Becket film, has been pretty much shaping his career the way he wants to following his win for The Departed a few years back. He’s got his directorial debut London Boulevard, starring Colin Farrell and Keira Knightley, coming out in the UK in a few weeks and the U.S. this February.
Here’s what he had to say about his Becket:
“It’s an adaptation, or re-invigoration, of an older play, which has already been a brilliant film…For me, it’s a chance to take on one of the greatest stories in our civilization, a double tragedy with two heroes, each of them paradoxical, each of them brilliant, each of them making mistakes that lead to their undoing. The world of the Plantagenets was very rich and we’ll open the play up into that world and go into the relationships of the Angevin court more than the 1964 film was able to do. To adapt something is to do a literary personalization of a story, so in that sense I’ll be doing a very different Becket.” [Deadline]
He seems passionate about the project, which is a very good start. The Anouilh play was certainly not the first exploration of the strange relationship between Becket and Henry II. T.S. Eliot’s masterful Murder In The Cathedral, which was performed 25 years before Becket, observes the last hours before Becket’s assassination after the disintegration of said relationship. Becket, in all of its incarnations, explores the whole of the relationship.
Henry II appointed Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, his chancellor in the hopes to further mold the politic with the church. When Becket revealed himself as mindful of a separation between church and state, it forced a rift between the two powers, ultimately ending their friendship and Becket’s life in 1170. He would be canonized by Pope Alexander 3 years later. Henry II received a public penance the following year.
Everything Monahan says about the story is completely true. Let’s hope the financiers feel the same way.
Do you know the story of Thomas a’ Becket? Seen Becket? Murder in the Cathedral?