I watched "Henry VIII" on PBS

[prog]

Interesting and original three-hour movie, but the editing is a bit too zippy. It's all about the latter years of his reign, when he became a big jerk in his neurotic quest to produce male heirs, and the editors seemed to be sympathizing with ol' Henry's panic as they rush together through six wives and related misfortunes. I had read the king's Wikipedia entry beforehand, so I knew why his weight ballooned and his health plummeted during a "Two years later..." scene break in part 2; I'm not sure I could have otherwize puzzled out just what had happened to him. (He had this thigh torn open during a joust, and infection slowly crippled and then killed him. We get to see the injury happen, but the connection isn't made explicit.)

The star-power focal point seemed to be Helena Bonham Carter as Anne Boleyn, playing her as a freespeaking hothead. It wasn't clear to me why she rather quickly came to love Henry after he manipulated her into marriage by overtly blocking her intended wedding to another nobleman, but, whatever. Blame the editors again, I guess. Interestingly, hers is the only of the film's many executions where the production crew crafted a wax likeness of her bloodied noggin for the swordsman to display for the crowd.

Learned a cinematic trick: if you need a male actor of average build to look grossly fat partway through a production, but don't want to bury his face in prosthetics, have his character suddenly favor a full beard, shaped to suggest bulbous jowls and chin underneath.

There were way, way too many scenes showing an agitator agitating a crowd, except for a single scowling man in the back, who then slips into the shadows: dum-dum-dummmmm. Also the crowd during the (frequent) beheading scenes seemed to be the exact same people every time, standing in the same spots, but that's commoners for you, I guess.

I knew it would end with a fade-out on Elizabeth, though they didn't zip into the future to show her in full regalia as I expected.

Comments

[aspartaimee.livejournal.com]

anne boleyn's execution is rather famous, spawning a children's song even, that jadelennox knows (i think).

did HBC have a prosthetic sixth finger? anne had a real one which lead many commoners to believe she was a witch. she was very unpopular with the people. the witchcraft rumor was very convenient for the court so when she failed to birth a male child, Henry and his advisors encouraged that belief. i remember reading eyewitness accounts from her exectution about her mouth opening and closing after her head was removed, which made people freak out that she was casting a spell on them. or rather her head was.

[prog.livejournal.com]

No, nothing like that happened. I doubt they went to the trouble of making her extradigital.

In the movie they sort of brought in witchcraft out of nowhere just as icing during her trial; there was more focus on a charge of incest, along with general infidelity, and of course the treasonous act of not making a baby boy for England.

[aspartaimee.livejournal.com]

huh. who was she incestuous with, her sister? i don't recall she had brothers, but maybe i am wrong about that. i guess there is always the dad. i think one of her stillbirth babies had a deformity (so did she, yo) and deformities were often associated with illicit sex at conception, so maybe that's where the incest came in? i really need to brush up on my tudor history.

i was at madame tussaud's in victoria BC, and checked it out. their wax anne has the six fingers. i bet the mini series people didn't bother with having her mouth open and close after the execution either.

[rserocki.livejournal.com]

This made me wonder, only for a moment, what Baron Vladimar Harkonen would be like, played by someone playing Henry VIII playing B.V.H.

Rick Wakeman produced an album called The Wives of King Henry VIII, with compositions named after each wife.

[magid.livejournal.com]

There's an interesting novel called The Autobiography of Henry VIII. Long, but good; I read it this fall in a fit of English history reading.