狼厅

　I am no history buff and haven't read the book(yet) and I basically know nothing about the history of Tudor England except that the king had many wives......however I was hooked after watching the first episode Three Card Trick and the second episode Entirely Beloved was even better but I think I need to re-watch them with subtitles to fully understand the plots...so here's my spoiler-free review.
　　
　　Though I knew people might dislike the dark visual effect. I for one absolutely love director Peter Kosminsky's shooting style with hand-held cameras and using only natural (candle/fire) light for night scenes. It's rare to do a television series(especially historical period drama) like that but the gloom does make the show feel more authenticity.
　　
　　Both Mark Rylance and Damian Lewis gave brilliant, nomination-deserving performance. Mark Rylance will surely be a serious Emmy (& Bafta)contender for best actor in a leading role this year and probably win. I'm biased obviously but I have to say it’s Damian Lewis who really steals the show every single time he appears.
　　
　　Wolf Hall seems likely to be one of the best historical drama ever so hopefully the upcoming episodes will live up to the hype.

I read New Yorker’s profile of Hilary Mantel in 2012 after she became the first female writer to win two Man Booker Prize. I was very intrigued by Mantel then, and put “Wolf Hall” on my to-read list. But never got around to do so.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/10/15/the-dead-are-real

BBC’s 6 episode “Wolf Hall” mini TV series got lots of praise. It is said that the screenwriter adapted Mantel’s work very nicely and captured the essence of the book.

I fell in love with it after watching Episode one.

The custom, setting, lighting were so well done, every frame looked like a painting. The acting was marvelous as well. Even though most of them were not familiar to the US audience. But supposedly all of the main characters were seasoned stage actors in England, and it showed.

See the album link below for some interesting comparison between the actors in the TV series and their actual portrait from the 16th century. Mostly by Hans Holbein the Younger, who was the official painter for the court of Henry VIII.

http://www.douban.com/photos/album/155586258/

Apparently the soundtrack of the TV series was also a hit in Britain. Too early to tell how it will fair in the US. I myself really loved the music.

http://music.163.com/#/album?id=3111229

The Guardian had episode by episode explanation of the story line, it was very helpful for people who is not familiar with the Tudor history (such as myself), which was pretty complicated.

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/series/wolf-hall-episode-by-episode

相比于美剧的粗暴情色嗜血，英剧绝对要慢热许多。去年BBC2套火爆的《狼厅Wolf Hall》就是典型的英式克制。该剧根据英国女作家希拉里·曼特尔两获布克奖的历史小说《狼厅Wolf Hall》和续篇《提堂Bring Up the Bodies》改编而成，强大的编导（导演：彼得·考斯明斯金）服化道演团队阵容，从细节上再现了都铎王朝亨利八世时期的宫廷权力争斗，有别于正史中的冷血杀戮，全篇以托马斯·克伦威尔的视角阐述历史事件，赢得狼群中人性的呼声。


对于托马斯·克伦威尔的家庭，正史上少有记载。只知道他1485年生于伦敦郊外的普特尼，一位伦敦郊区铁匠的儿子。短剧第一季共六集，导演擅长通过平行历史叙事、闪回，而由老戏骨马克·里朗斯扮演的托马斯·克伦威尔，每个眼神，每一次脸部抽搐或是冷凝的动作，都耐人寻味。他为何最终在英王亨利八世的宫廷里掌控了巨大权力，这和曼特尔在书中对他童年形象的构建不无关系。


一个饥饿、焦虑而孤独的童年：铁匠父亲时常醉酒殴打托马斯，七岁时，他住在红衣主教莫顿家，他的叔叔在那儿做厨师。九岁时，他目击了一位八十岁的异教徒被活活烧死。十五岁时，他在遭受父亲毒打后离家出走，此后的十年生活，加入了法国雇佣军，远征意大利，在佛罗伦萨的某家人家做仆人，又在罗马、威尼斯、安特卫普间旅行，成为银行家和布商……再回到英国，已是而立之年。


时值亨利八世在位，英国和当时的欧洲诸国一样，受制于罗马天主教教廷，晦暗不明之时，托马斯·克伦威尔曾游历诸国的见识令他看到了向上攀爬的契机。他以其精明、和善、野心勃勃，顺理成章成为红衣主教沃尔西的律师和商业咨询师。沃尔西初见他时，说: “噢，终于有一个比我还卑微的人出现了！”托马斯不以为然，隐而不发。此时的沃尔西是他立足英国进入上层的垫脚石，他必须视沃尔西为朋友，听沃尔西倾诉，为沃尔西分忧。当沃尔西迫于天主教教规，未能如亨利八世所愿帮助他与西班牙公主阿拉贡凯瑟琳离婚后，克伦威尔及时出现，当他了解到亨利八世想要再婚繁衍皇室子嗣，他开始逐渐靠拢安·博林，四处安插眼线，支持当时的新教改革，大胆建议亨利八世对抗罗马教廷。最终，英国国会脱离了罗马教廷，大主教宣布亨利与凯瑟琳的婚姻无效，于是他与女侍官安·博林的婚姻由此合法。托马斯因为安·博林的成功上位立下汗马功劳，令亨利八世刮目相看，也借此埋下了个人权谋欲望的种子。


托马斯·克伦威尔大权在握，自诩只有亨利八世一位朋友。当亨利八世因参加骑士比武意外昏死场面混乱，托马斯·克伦威尔迅速嘱咐手下迎接照管好废王后凯瑟琳之女玛丽公主。这一举动，在克伦威尔的角度，唯恐陷入王室纷争维护正统，而并非私心，却成为后来安·博林的心梗。片中的克伦威尔，在妻女突然病逝时显现出为人丈夫为人父亲的温存，嘱咐儿子在骑士格斗中需忘记保全生命最后一刻出击拼杀，以及他在搬倒政治对手时对其遗孀的怜悯，恐怕只有他的门生更能体察。


托马斯·克伦威尔不是不知道王权的至高无上不可侵犯，不是不知道伴君如伴虎。作为一个卑微的铁匠之子，穿梭于波诡云谲的宫廷，他能做到察言观色，时刻掌握亨利八世的喜怒哀乐，竭尽全力地扶持亨利，为亨八的欲望付出刽子手的代价，他其实内伤戳戳。譬如，作为亨利八世的首席谋臣，他为玛丽公主设计了远嫁西班牙的计划目的是避免战争却遭到亨利的怒斥和羞辱，他举起交叉的双手，沉默走开，镜头回向童年，他的铁匠父亲告诉他，双手交叉可以减轻疼痛。


片中我们看到王后安·博林没能给亨利八世诞下王子，已成为亨利八世厌弃王后的最大理由。此时的托马斯·克伦威尔，一边要应付博林家的宫廷势力，老贵族权臣们的虎视眈眈，一边又要为亨利八世出谋划策罢黜安·博林。其实，无论是在国王亨利还是王后安·博林的眼里，克伦威尔都是一只随叫随到可以随时踹死的狗。只是，克伦威尔再一次选择了亨利。他暗中调查安·博林，设计审判博林家的贵族势力。都铎王朝第二任王后安·博林的斩首现场，克伦威尔在人群中抓紧门徒的手臂目不斜视地盯着刀斧手砍掉博林的头，那一刻，他的内心戏足够丰盛。


在这些历史事件中，导演遵循曼特尔的叙事，并没有试图重建一个铁匠之子年少的失落岁月，而是让克伦威尔的举止和不得已的阴谋周旋在都铎王朝宫廷上空。所谓的历史，无非是人与人之间的狼性竞争，在权谋政治中，更是由歪曲的流言、轶事组装起来。第一季《狼厅Wolf Hall》的结尾，亨利八世庆祝安·博林的罢黜，拥抱了托马斯·克伦威尔。镜头定格在克伦威尔刻板的脸上，我们看到一张细致、细腻、自觉、自律并且忐忑不知未来的脸；一个白手起家的下层屌丝，永远不可能褪去铁匠之子的身份阴影，也必须将喜怒哀乐隐藏的更深，为王者的王权不停沦为权谋政治世界中的棋子。


题外，剧中安·博林的扮演者气场上差了很多意思，若是凯拉·莱特利出演，该完美许多。期待第二季《狼厅Wolf Hall》的上映，曼特尔笔下搅动都铎王朝更加鲜活生动的克伦威尔。

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/22/thomas-cromwell-fixer-wolf-hall?CMP=share_btn_fb

Cromwell, the fixers’ fixer: a role model for our times
Martin Kettle


Thomas Cromwell is the politician of the moment. We seem entranced by him. How cunning and deep he is. How clever and calculating. With what skill he acquires, husbands and uses his power. How precise he is in his judgment of when to speak and when to stay silent, when to watch and when to act, absolutely ruthlessly if need be.

We are a nation hooked on Cromwell, as a result of Hilary Mantel’s novels. And now perhaps in even greater numbers than before, thanks to the BBC’s dramatisation of Wolf Hall that began this week, whose centrepiece is Mark Rylance’s Cromwell: the outsider who mesmerisingly watches, plots and thinks his way into the heart of the English Tudor state.

On one level, the current national embrace of Cromwell is easy to explain. The Tudors are box office. And Cromwell was a big Tudor figure. Mantel’s books expertly draw the reader into Cromwell’s reflective world, where his words are the tip of an iceberg of unspoken feelings and thoughts. After just one episode, Rylance’s portrayal is already a masterpiece of suggestion, tempting us to overlook Shakespeare’s advice that there’s “no art to find the mind’s construction in the face”

It is sometimes implied that Mantel’s reimagining of Cromwell has overturned the way we see the reign of Henry VIII. But this shows what short memories we all have. This is not the first time in English history that Cromwell’s stock has been so high. After his death, many Elizabethans saw him as a heroic martyr to the English protestant cause. And after the second world war Professor GR Elton – uncle of Ben – placed him on a very different pedestal at the heart of what he called the Tudor revolution in government.

Elton’s Cromwell was the man who blew away the medieval system of government based on the king’s household. He replaced it with a departmental bureaucracy that was the forerunner of the modern constitutional state. In Elton’s judgment, Cromwell was “the most remarkable revolutionary in English history”, and his intellect “the most successfully radical instrument at any man’s disposal in the 16th century”. Mantel’s Cromwell owes much to Elton’s heroic reinvention.

Yet Cromwell, even in the Elton-Mantel version, is a very improbable hero for our times. Cromwell’s essential attraction is his mastery of statecraft, his ability to identify a political goal and achieve it unerringly but pragmatically. He is unsentimental, cold-blooded, secular, and ruthless. He is a master of detail and of small moves in the service of larger ones. It is not clear whether Cromwell ever read Machiavelli, but there have been few leaders in English or British political history who better embodied Machiavellian ideas. In short, he is the sum of much that the modern era dislikes, or affects to dislike, in its politicians.

What is even more unlikely about Cromwell’s place in the sun, as Mantel’s readers and viewers will know, is that he was an enemy of a man who in so many ways is the sum of everything that the modern era admires, or affects to admire. Thomas More remains the incarnation of individual conscience, of rising above the quotidian, and doing the morally right thing in difficult and dangerous times. It is no surprise that in postwar Britain, it was More, especially as embodied by Paul Scofield in A Man for All Seasons, who ruled the Tudor roost.

By rights, More ought to be the man for our season too. He is pre-emenintly the Tudor politician who embodies sticking to firm principles, upholding moral authority and obeying the dictates of conscience. He refuses to do the politically convenient thing because he believes it is wrong – and pays with his life. Not for him Cromwell’s cynical survive-the-day relativism. If anyone is the man for an age that feels tarnished by illegal wars, mistreated by the power of corporations and banks, betrayed by MPs’ expenses, demeaned by the banality of modern politics, it is surely More.

And yet our age has embraced not pious, high-minded More, but aspirational, crafty Cromwell, who stands for everything we say we dislike about modern politics and statecraft. It is a very odd disjunction. It could simply be that we all love a costume drama with great actors. But it could also suggest there is some hope for politics yet.

Politicians could hardly suffer from lower esteem than they do at the moment. A survey published this week by the Edelman PR company confirms the overwhelmingly negative picture of the past few years, with trust in the doldrums, and with the reputations of government, business and media all flatlining. “People are desperate for honesty and fair play,” the report concludes. This is one reason why support for the established political parties is so low and why a proportion of the electorate is now embracing parties that offer easy answers to complex and difficult real problems.

Cromwell stands against all that. He stands for the art of politics, not for fantasy politics. It has often been said, including by RA Butler, who chose the phrase for the title of his memoirs, that politics is the art of the possible. I prefer Robin Cook’s characterisation that politics is also the art of the impossible. Cromwell was the vindication of that view – and his distant and later relative Oliver wasn’t bad at the game either. Cromwell knew precisely where he was trying to get, and he was pretty effective about getting there.

There is no point requiring every politician to have Cromwell’s gifts. It would be a scary political scene if they did. But there is a great deal of point in valuing and celebrating the statecraft and the political calculation that Cromwell mastered so well. Honesty and fair play are all very well, but effectiveness and continued support count for more in the end.

I read somewhere that the late Caroline Benn, wife of Tony, thought that political leaders fell into three categories: , which she called pedestrians, fixers or madmen. Allocating British prime ministers to the three categories is an entertaining exercise, especially if you remember that no category has all the virtues or all the vices. Tony Benn, apparently, was confident that if he had become prime minister he would have been one of the madmen.

I like fixers. The pedestrians frustrate me. The madmen frighten me. True, fixers aren’t always the best politicians. But the best politicians are almost always good fixers. Think Lloyd George or Franklin Roosevelt. And Cromwell, a fixers’ fixer, is right up there too. As long as we understand that knowing what you want is utterly useless unless you also know how to get it, then politics will have a storied future as well as a storied past.