The Reckoning Review
by Harvey S. Karten (harveycritic AT cs DOT com)March 22nd, 2004
THE RECKONING
Reviewed by: Harvey S. Karten
Grade: B+
Paramount Classics
Directed by: Paul McGuigan
Written by: Mark Mills, novel by Barry Unsworth
Cast: Paul Bettany, Willem Dafoe, Simon McBurney, Gina McKee, Brian Cox, Tom Hardy, Stuart Wells
Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 2/4/04
Every school child knows (or used to know) the quote from "Hamlet," "The play's the thing/ Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king." In Shakespeare's most celebrated tragedy, Hamlet is determined to expose the king as the murderer of Hamlet's father. He makes sure his majesty has the best seat in the house, re-enacts the killing through poison in the ear, the king turns pale and bolts. Guilty as charged.
While Paul McGuigan's stunning new movie, "The Reckoning," based on Barry Unsworth's Booker Prize- nominated "Morality Play" and adapted by scripter Mark Mills, looks like a ripoff of the Bard, only the concept is utilized, broadly so, because the perpetrator of the actual crime re- enacted on the stage is not present for the performance. The local citizens are there in force, and given their lack of literacy and sophistication are drawn in by a show from a professional group of roving actors, a band which breaks with tradition to convince the masses how justice can be served.
We should mention at this point that in one of the film's rare comic moments, when a performer grumbles about his low station that "actors used to be respected," McGuigan is not dealing with the Broadway scene in New York but with theater conventions of England during the late 14th century, over a hundred years before the Elizabethans revived the glories of tragedy. At the time, in 1380 to be precise, nobody thinks out of the box, at least not until the traveling band of thesps led by Martin (Willem Dafoe) decide to shock the ragged folks in the audience by presenting not a religious play (they already bombed with their wooden performance of the temptation of Adam by Eve) but one dealing with current events: with a crime in the shire presided over by a Norman noble (Vincent Cassel). The gasp issued from the cheap seats makes us wonder just how such an idea could be so radical, but remember that in more recent times with the performance of the first modern, naturalistic drama, "Therese Raquin" circa 1880, theater dealt always with subjects far removed from audience lives.
While everyone speaks modern English thank goodness, no Chaucerian brogue in the house director McGuigan nicely captures the spirit of the times; the ragged costumes of the peasantry, the armor of the village lord's equestrian guards, and all the appurtenances of the late Middle Ages including a Spanish chateau. The Shakespearean tragic hero is in the forefront over a century before such a character became fashionable: in this case the flawed individual who must ultimately pay for his crime of passion is a fallen priest, Nicholas (Paul Bettany), who had been caught in flagrante with another man's wife and hits the road in search of serenity. Joining a band of actors, he comes upon a village in which a woman has been found guilty of the robbery-murder of a young boy, Thomas Wells, sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered the following eve. As a deaf-mute, she is unable to launch an effective defense and must rely on the kindness of strangers. When Nicholas, certain that the woman is innocent, convinces the band to re-enact the murder on stage, he and his troupe appear to win the sympathies of the audience. However, an ingenious twist involving European politics right up to King Richard complicates the story.
"The Reckoning" boasts an astonishing performance by Paul Bettany, who helped drive "Master and Commander" into the Oscar competition, a rendition of a conscience-stricken priest not topped by even the wonderful Willem Dafoe. If the denouement unfolds too suddenly, conveniently wrapping up the story without as much as a foreshadowing, the film is rich in historical detail with its evocation of a plague (perhaps an offshoot of the Black Death of 1348) bearing obvious resonance to the disastrous infestation of AIDS in our own time.
Rated R. 110 minutes.(c) 2004 by Harvey Karten at
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