Becket looks like a Serious movie for Serious people—it's from 1964, concerns the friendship (then foeship) between King Henry II and the Archbishop of Canterbury, stars legendary artistes Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole, is based on a play by a Frenchman, uses English history (Normans vs. Saxons, crown vs. clergy) as its backdrop, and has the audacity to be a movie about medieval power struggles without a single battle scene. It is a serious movie, but between the smart script and two-part harmony of O'Toole and Burton, it's also really, really fun.
The Normans have invaded England and are behaving like conquerors—drunk, violent, and contemptuous of the Saxon natives. Henry II (O'Toole) is a proper party king ("let us drink, till we roll under the table in vomit and oblivion!") and typical Norman, until he meets Becket (Burton), his confidant, aide, and beloved friend. Or lover. Or almost lover. Or something. There is a clear tension between them—but is it barely veiled early-'60s homoeroticism or is it platonic love that we, living in the hypersexualized 21st century, assume is barely veiled homoeroticism because we're so worked up about sexual liberation and the celluloid closet that we've forgotten that two men (or two anybody) can really, really love each other without wanting to make the beast with two backs? It's hard to say.
Henry loves Becket but Becket loves nobody—he seems infinitely faithful to his king, but not very fond of him. He accompanies Henry in drinking, chasing skirts, and terrorizing peasants, but his Machiavellian genius lies in helping Henry stay on top of the aristocracy and the church, both of which are trying to wriggle free of the king's authority. Everybody besides Henry hates Becket because he's a Saxon, he's the cleverest man in court (and knows it), and he's closer to the king's heart than anyone, including the queen (to whom Henry delivers the finest line in the film, in reference to having sired her royal children: "Your body, madam, was a desert that duty forced me to wander in alone!").
The first half of the movie is delightful. King Henry is a fuckup—a crass, drunk, lecherous brute, and unashamed of it. His self-knowledge makes him endearing and hilarious. Henry II is Falstaff made king.
Tragedy strikes when Becket finds someone to love: the Lord. In a political maneuver, Henry makes Becket the Archbishop of Canterbury, but Becket, unexpectedly, takes his new job seriously. He has no real love for the priests (who, like the nobles, hate the Saxon upstart) but his sudden and unexplained passion for Christ tumbles him into their camp. When King Henry asks Becket to give an ecclesiastical pass to a Norman lord who killed a priest, Becket refuses. Henry feels not just the sting of betrayal ("Becket is the only intelligent man in my kingdom and he's against me!") but of heartbreak.
Aside from the occasional rant by O'Toole's Henry, the second half of Becket feels empty. The king and his companion are estranged, robbing the film of its pleasure: the glowing tension between Burton and O'Toole, one a reserved lion, the other a frolicsome lamb.
They are a perfect pair, carousers onscreen and off, O'Toole the son of an Irish bookie, Burton the son of a Welsh coal miner. Both were shameless drinkers and successful Lotharios: Burton with his brooding manliness, O'Toole with an ethereal, feminine intelligence offset by an intense recklessness. Which do you prefer? It could almost be a Cosmo quiz. If Burton: Your ladylike composure is a front for the vixen inside. If O'Toole: There's a self-destructive streak beneath your playful exterior.... Even the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences couldn't decide between the two. In a fit of cowardice, they gave the 1964 Oscar to Rex Harrison for My Fair Lady instead of awarding it to the O'Toole-Burton alliance, which was greater than the sum of its parts.
The Great Cop Out of 1964 just added to the couple's mythos: O'Toole and Burton, two of the greatest film actors ever, are tied for Most Fruitless Nominations, at seven each. Or they were tied. The Academy, in all its satanic malice, has fucked up the O'Toole-Burton legacy by nominating O'Toole for Venus. Whatever happens at the Oscars—whether O'Toole wins his first or loses his eighth—a beautiful symmetry is forever lost.
