Wolf Hall exists in various versions. There is a celebrated historical novel by Hilary Mantel, the original source for this material. A Broadway show, apparently epic in length, has adapted Mantel's book to the stage. The version here considered is a six-hour series aired on PBS in the Spring of 2015. The proliferation of Wolf Halls is puzzling to me. Admittedly, I have never acquired the slightest interest in the British royals and their private lives, and so, the subject of Wolf Hall, the 8th Henry and his romantic entanglements, doesn't appeal to me. I don't know the story, haven't read the book, and the general subject of the narrative, the exercise of political and dynastic power in the 16th century, seems remote from anything modern -- in short, and to use a horrible term, these materials doesn't seem "relevant" to me, although this is probably short-sighted and, even, obtuse. Of course, film makers have been attracted to the morbid story of Henry and his six wives for as long as there has been cinema -- and, indeed, before: Schiller wrote Mary Stuart about one of Henry's nieces (she figures remotely in Wolf Hall). Alexander Korda made a film about the King and his romances. In my lifetime, the persecution of the detestable Sir Thomas More by Henry was portrayed in A Man for all Seasons; Ann Boleyn's miserable fate has been the subject of a half-dozen films including Anne of a Thousand Days and The Other Boleyn Girl. This obvious and persistent interest in a topic that doesn't inspire me in the slightest demonstrates that my views on the subject in general must, necessarily, be dissenting. (Wolf Hall, as shown on PBS, seems very perceptive on the subject of class distinctions -- much of the action is driven by resentment against the power wielded by a man of humble origins, the protagonist, Thomas Cromwell, a blacksmith's son. Americans raised to think they live in a classless society will be blind to much of what is significant in this story.)
PBS' Wolf Hall is brilliantly acted and staged with a certain funereal magnificence. The castles halls seem realistically dank and the skies are mostly overcast. The costuming is spectacular and the photography, if gloomy, has an effective chiaroscuro character -- scenes shot in candle-lit halls seem to actually have been lit by candles. The characters in their ermine-trimmed furs always seem to be a little bit cold and their gestures and appearance have the somber and precise splendor of portraits by Holbein. The problem that I have with the series is that the subject matter is baffling and the mise en scene remote to the point of indifference. The program details Machiavellian scheming by Henry's counselors (and his adversaries) focusing on the character of Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell is not a "happy warrior" -- rather, he is a somewhat sullen, taciturn conniver, a man who keeps his own counsel and speaks only in vague riddles. The nobles and the King are portrayed as thugs, arrogant gangsters, and the loyal factotum or, more accurately, henchman, Thomas Cromwell, acts with increasing viciousness throughout the series, his villainy reaching its climax when he effects a Stalinist-style purge of Anne Boleyn and her courtiers, a series of murders accomplished by way of perjury, torture, and a show-trial. Since Cromwell is portrayed as generally sympathetic -- he is a kind father and diligent husband until his wife dies -- our emotional response to the principal character is complex and riven with conflict. It's as if someone were to contrive a lengthy film showing Goebbels as a gentle and wise family man, a paternal figure from Father Knows Best, burdened by a nasty day job -- or, as if we were asked to applaud the scheming of a man like Beria in Stalin's court. Cromwell is a tool of Henry's policy, but we are never shown the nature of that policy nor the value of Henry's dynastic ambitions. Is Henry a good king, a bad one, or a mediocrity as the series seems to suggest? Why is Cromwell so slavishly loyal to him? On the surface of things, nothing seems to be at stake except Henry's ability to sire a son. This incapacity leads to all sorts of trouble, including the execution of Thomas More and the Protestant Reformation in England -- clearly, it seems that something else must be at stake here, but whatever that might be, we aren't told. Like most PBS shows of the Masterpiece Theater type, the program moves with glacial dignity -- most of the shots show Cromwell pacing about in his elegant dark robes, usually in a colloquy with one of his co-conspirators or exchanging cryptic epigrams with an adversary: it resembles an Aaron Sorkin show like The West Wing on Quaaludes. Although the subject matter is Shakespearian, the dialogue seems modern, clipped, brusque patter from a play by Harold Pinter -- there are no stirring speeches, no flights of imagination, no unusual imagery, and, alas, no soliloquies to explain what motivates any of the characters. Accordingly, we are left with an image of the people and their era that never comes into focus. I recognize this as an esthetic choice, indeed, as a brave decision to allow the material to remain ambiguous, but this decision strips the material of any drama -- there's no real conflict since everything is controlled by Cromwell and his king and, of course, all outcomes are never in doubt. The adaptation seems respectful, hushed, and highly disciplined -- the sheer strangeness of the medieval past is never exploited: the show doesn't revel in freakish images and the characters all are dignified and articulate, probably like the bureaucrats at PBS and the BBC that produced this program. The powerful last episode featuring the execution of Anne Boleyn demonstrates both the strengths and weaknesses of the series. Given the brief of removing Anne Boleyn from power, Cromwell contrives her prosecution for a series of crimes, including incestuous adultery with her own brother. It would seem to me that a show about the death of Anne Boleyn should probably take some position as to whether that woman was guilty of some of the offenses charged against her. Wolf Hall leaves this completely unclear -- Cromwell's insinuating interviews with witnesses against the Queen suggest that he actually believes that she is guilty. (Indeed, when he confronts the Queen with the accusation of incest, Cromwell takes care to lay out a lawyerly case as to why such a crime might be plausible.) So we are left with this interpretative crux -- is she really guilty? and does Cromwell believe she is guilty? Or is he merely a superb prosecutor who comes to believe in the justice of his prosecution, even, though intellectually he knows that the Queen is entirely innocent? Or is he simply acting with total malevolence in the service of the King -- that is, intentionally convicting a woman that he must know to be innocent? All of this is left radically unclear -- with the result, as I have said, that the show is "blurred"; it never comes into focus. Similarly, on the scaffold, Anne Boleyn makes a pathetic speech praising the King. Because she is terrified and scarcely able to speak, her voice doesn't carry and the crowd of people gathered in the courtyard to see her beheaded can't hear what she is saying. If the series were to have the courage of its absurdist, and Pinteresque convictions, Anne's speech would not be audible -- people would strain to hear her, but not know what she is saying. But this is Masterpiece Theater and home audience gathered for the execution in front of their wide-screen TVs have tuned-in to enjoy the lavish production, the beautiful costumes, and the gorgeous Royal Shakespeare Company diction. And so the director cuts to a close-up so that we can hear exactly what poor Anne is saying -- the audience appreciates this, but it seems to be cheating. Either we are going to be allowed to know things with certainty about Henry and Anne and the other denizens of his age. Or we are going to be deprived of any real knowledge. Wolf Hall mixes the two paradigms in an unsettling way and this simply blurs most of what we are seeing and, of course, confounds our response to the material.
In Ozu's late films, we are shown something that is very rare in cinema, a special effect almost never effectively achieved -- in some of the great director's shots, we seem to see people actually thinking. Mark Ryland's performance as Thomas Cromwell is similar -- as we watch him observing Henry's court, we seem to be seeing a man engaged in deep and intelligent thought. This is a great rarity. But Ryland's brilliant acting seems in service of something small and, even, contemptible -- his Cromwell doesn't act, he schemes and plots for the King. Although Cromwell engineers much of what we see in the program, he is a fundamentally passive tool, an instrument in the hands of the King, and his lack of agency, ultimately, frustrates the audience.
Wolf Hall airs on Sunday night and, as soon as its chilly tableaux end, with some relief, I switch to HBO to watch Julia Louis Dreyfus in the raunchy political comedy Veep. In this season's show, Dreyfus has succeeded to the presidency. Like Henry VIII in Wolf Hall she is surrounded by an unctuous mob of sycophants and toadying assistants. If anything, she is even more perverse and thuggish than Henry in Wolf Hall -- no one gets beheaded, but characters are continuously humiliated, publicly abused and shamed, and summarily dismissed from service. Dreyfus' corrupt president spends all of her time scheming for political advantage -- around her the world is going up in flames and the economy seems to be collapsing, but she pays none of these crises any mind. The politicians that surround her, all of them conniving for her failure, are also uniformly moronic, self-serving, and vicious. The show is nihilistic -- it's premise is that all politics is so irredeemably corrupt as to be laughable -- and, certainly, suggests to its audience that our response to the great questions of our age should be limited to helpless despair. But it's a funny show with a lot of witty, if vulgar, dialogue. And to be frank, Veep renders Wolf Hall superfluous. It's Wolf Hall with jokes and some slapstick comedy and sans the beheadings, torture, ermine-fringed robes, and candle-lit dungeons. Just about everything you can find in Wolf Hall is shown more effectively and more cynically in Veep.
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