- "I've snapped and plotted all my life," explains the aging King Henry II (Peter O'Toole). "There's no other way to be alive, king, and fifty all at once." This is but one of the King's many boasts in The Lion in Winter, and it goes a long way toward explaining the state of the royal family. The Queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katharine Hepburn), arrives for Christmas on a marvelous boat that has conveyed her from where the King keeps her imprisoned throughout the rest of the year. "It's only for the holidays," he quickly reminds her. The eldest son Richard (Anthony Hopkins), a self-described "constant soldier" and "sometimes poet," comes across as the most honorable member of the family, although rumors abound concerning his illicit relationship with the slippery Prince Philip II of France (Timothy Dalton). Still, Philip's duplicity is nothing compared with that of the middle son, Geoffrey (John Castle), whose calculating nature reminds the King more of "wheels and gears" than of an actual human being. And finally there's the youngest son, John (Nigel Terry), a strange and disheveled little creature who lacks what you might call the royal bearing. By the end of the holiday, Henry intends to name one of these three Princes as successor to the throne.
- Complicating Henry's decision, however, is an elaborate set of political concerns, intrigues, and ploys that is probably impossible to ever completely unravel. "We could tangle spiders in the webs you weave," Richard comments to Eleanor, but the criticism applies to the whole family. Henry initially favors John, but one suspects that he has some ulterior motive for doing so. Eleanor's preference for Richard holds a lot of weight since she controls the strategically valuable Aquitaine, but Richard would prefer to have both the land and the kingship. Nobody trusts Geoffrey to be King, but everybody realizes that ignoring him will surely lead to a knife in the back. In one of the film's most telling scenes, all three sons find themselves hiding in Philip's tapestries as schemes are hatched and rehatched between combinations of Philip, Henry, and Eleanor. One way out of this mess may be for Henry to marry his mistress Alais (Jane Merrow), the only innocent character in this drama, in order to have more sons. "That is the single thing of which I would have thought you had enough," retorts Eleanor. By the film's end, all possible insults have been hurled, every plot has been hatched, multiple marriages have been proposed, and still no successor. See everyone again next year?
- Strangely enough, the film that The Lion in Winter reminds me of most is actually Howard Hawks' His Girl Friday. One is a semi-historical 60's costume picture and the other a 40's screwball comedy, but both films are made and, in my opinion, unmade by their unwavering barrage of dialogue. Despite the fact that much of this repartee is clever, enough invective is hurled that, by film's end, this reviewer feels like collateral damage in a neverending war. In this film in particular, so little has been decided by the closing credits that the entire affair seems like little more than an exercise in yelling. That said, The Lion in Winter does get several things precisely right. Its gorgeous sets, for example, are as good as any that cover this time period and decidedly less anachronistic than some of its dialogue. The film's major triumph, though, is in its brilliant casting. Dalton and Hopkins are excellent in fledgling roles, but O'Toole and Hepburn steal every scene they're in with their own unique approaches to blustering, bellowing, and brooding. They were the closest things to cinematic royalty from that era, and they elevated the film considerably beyond where its script should have taken it.
- Hepburn won a Best Actress Oscar.
- This was Dalton's screen debut and Hopkins' second film role.
