Howdy peeps!
Been a while since I posted here and I apologise for my
tardiness, but since discovering the joys of the Book of Face I have found the
very notion of a long, leisurely blog post too bloody hard to contemplate.
Sorry.
However, I had the pleasure of watching the BBC television adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall on DVD recently and I finally felt a long overdue
urge to review.
Those who know me well have heard me bang on incessantly
about Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and
its sequel, Bring up the Bodies, two
killer novels about the life and times of sixteenth-century Tudor Court
enforcer and complicated bully-boy Thomas Cromwell. I’ve even blogged about them here. I love them. I love them so much, I have read them both EIGHT times
– and keep discovering little golden morsels I missed in previous readings.
True story.
So it was with some trepidation that I approached the
television adaptation. After all, Mark Rylance is far too lean and wispy to
play the bulky bulldog-in-human-form who was Thomas Cromwell; Damian Lewis is
too pretty to play Henry VIII, plus there’s always the danger that any period
telly with the whiff of Masterpiece Theatre about it, is going to feel like a
parody or a Monty Python piss-take after the first five minutes. Blame Merchant
Ivory.
But still, I bit the bullet, bought the DVD from my local JB
Hifi and convinced Muddy K to watch it with me. I thought, “if it sucks, at
least we can suffer together”.
Well, I can safely say it didn’t suck and Mark Rylance’s fat
suit gave him some much needed heft. Phew. In fact, it was pretty bloody good – it was
exceptionally well-acted (Mark Rylance’s eyebrows and mouth deserve their own
BAFTA), beautifully filmed (using natural light sources or candles at night
where appropriate) and wrapped up in a gorgeous Michael Nymanesque soundtrack.
The adaptation moves at a cracking pace, distilling the story
to its barest historical essentials, focusing on key dramatic points from both
novels: The hounding and premature death of Cardinal Wolsey; Cromwell’s winning
of Henry’s favour; the execution of Thomas More for his unwillingness to
support Henry’s break from Rome; and finally, Cromwell biding his time for when
he can stitch up the men (and woman) who defamed the Cardinal and hastened his
death.
One minor complaint: stripping out all the lovely domestic
detail of Cromwell’s life (his warm and indulgent relationship with his son
Gregory, his friendship with his mother-in-law Mercy, his support of his sister
and her children; his house as a hive of charitable industry and his extended
faux-family of wards - like Helen the abandoned laundress) robs the story of
some of its texture and Cromwell of some of his motivation. A teeny quibble.
In short, this is pretty darn marvelous and I’ll probably
watch it again over the summer. I highly recommend.
