39th Academy Awards (1967)
Nominations: 8
Wins: 6
Early in the morning of December 4, 2024, a masked gunman assassinated UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City. The shooter’s spent cases had the words “delay, deny, depose” written on them, similar to the insurance industry’s famous phrase “delay, deny, defend,” which refers to the extreme effort companies put into not paying out claims. Five days later, following a nationwide manhunt, Luigi Nicholas Mangione, a 26-year-old data engineer with no prior criminal record, was arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. As the prime suspect in the killing, Mangione is currently facing 11 charges in New York state and four federal charges, including a murder charge that makes him eligible for the death penalty.
Among Mangione’s personal effects was a 262-word document about the corruption and failure American healthcare system. A deep dive into Mangione’s social media presence makes it difficult to put him in a box, perhaps the only label that fits him is “anti-system.” And that ideological ambiguity coupled with seeming moral consistency has helped turn Mangione into a folk hero. Mangione has become the subject of memes, look-alike contests, protests, and even a sex tape hoax. Supporters are donating to his jail commissary and writing him letters and sharing online his heartfelt responses. There is even merch being sold online that depicts Mangione as a Catholic saint, just like Sir Thomas More, the subject of A Man for All Seasons.
Paul Scofield plays Sir Thomas More, a lawyer, theologian, family man, and one of the most trusted advisors of King Henry VIII (Robert Shaw). More is in hot water with the Lord Chancellor, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (Orson Welles), for being the only member of the king’s council to not endorse Wolsey’s attempts to get the pope to annul Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Catherine had been unable to bear Henry an heir and the king had already moved onto Anne Boleyn (Vanessa Redgrave) in the hopes to avoid another civil war. But More is a profoundly devout Catholic and wants no part of this business, despite otherwise being a loyal royal servant.
More returns to his family in Chelsea and attempts to stay out of politics but the game is already afoot. Wolsey’s last attempt fails and he dies in disgrace, so Henry appoints More as the new Lord Chancellor and asks him to figure out the annulment situation, how very Game of Thrones. More flatly refuses, upsetting the king, who doesn’t seem like the greatest guy in the world. Henry gets parliament to make him the head of the new Church of England and a third Thomas, Thomas Cromwell (Leo McKern), who is both More’s rival and Wolsey’s former aid, takes over as Lord Chancellor. As the ground gives way beneath him, More is forced to decide what’s more important to him: his faith or his life?
Sadly, I find myself not as moved by More’s plight as I think A Man for All Seasons wants me to be, I just have a hard time relating to this very specific line More’s not willing to cross. He doesn’t really have beef with the king or his peers and he’s not even really being persecuted for being Catholic, just for not recognizing the king’s authority to overrule the pope. Much of More’s case comes down to his refusing to take an oath – at this time in England, silence is legally implicit consent, but everyone knows that More really dissents. It’s an interesting situation and I admit the stakes are high, but ultimately I just wasn’t sold on this guy’s argument for throwing his life away. It seemed like he could have done more good had he stayed in the game. The narrated epilogue implies the same.
But it’s hard to estimate the valor of martyrdom when it happens. 300 years after his death, Pope Pius XI canonized More and on Halloween in 2000, Pope John Paul II declared More “heavenly Patron of Statesmen and Politicians.” That said, he remained unpopular amongst some historians, who argue that portrayals like in A Man for All Seasons misrepresent More as a principled conscientious objector instead of someone who viciously, violently hated Protestants. Ultimately, does the truth matter? More’s been dead for 490 years and we still don’t have a unanimous conclusion about him. Like Luigi Mangione, all we can be certain of is what happened, the motives don’t matter. It’s what they did that defines them. And that’s a Batman Begins quote.