BBC'S WOLF HALL

A few minutes into the first episode of the BBC serialization of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, I'd forgiven British actor Mark Rylance his ridiculous and offensive anti-Stratfordianism--and every other sin he might have committed.  Within a handful of scenes, he has reminded me why I so loved the way Mantel portrayed Thomas Cromwell in her novels.  To say that Cromwell (the fictional character--who knows about the real man?) is simply an emblem of Realpolitik or Machiavellianism would be a rank error.  The screenwriter who adapted the script from Mantel's novels knew what he was doing: by the end of Cromwell's first scene with his beloved wife, Liz, we have a real live human being before us, one of considerable intelligence, resourcefulness, and foresight; a pragmatic man who wants not only what is best for himself but equally so (perhaps more so) what is good for the kingdom he serves--which means not only its monarch (or not especially its monarch) but also the people who, Cromwell believes, deserve the bloody chance to read (or hear) their religion's holy book in a language that they can actually understand.  This Cromwell is a man who wants to cut through whatever bullshit (there's simply no other word for it, though we could never imagine the man himself employing such an indelicate phrase) that can reasonably be cut through to find the pith and marrow of any matter.

Seeing the drama unfold is a different experience from reading it--a complementary experience.  Seeing the story makes clearer the tragedy of it.  Cromwell is not simply an admirable man; he's an admirable man with flaws that prove his undoing.  Thomas More is not simply the stick-in-the-mud religious extremist that he initially presents.  He is that, but there's more to him, and Rylance makes us feel Cromwell's genuine dismay and frustration at the demise of his sometime rival.  Working largely through meaningful silences, Rylance makes us feel what Cromwell feels: that even his triumphs are attended with melancholy, that in politics (if not in business) every deal (however necessary) is struck at an unreasonable price.  More and more, as he gains King Henry's favor, Cromwell pays at higher costs to himself, and you can see it toll on him.  Nothing, however, seems to cost the king a thing.

If Rylance is good, much of it has to do simply with the gravity, the reserved and subtle feeling, that he brings to his Cromwell, whose utterances are comparatively few considering the amount of time the camera expends upon him.  (The show does a remarkable job of translating Mantel's narrative technique -- focused so much upon the run of Cromwell's thoughts, on his perspective -- into a kind of functional reverse perspective: we see Cromwell instead of seeing what he sees.  But it works -- it achieves largely the same effect.)  Damian Lewis, as Henry VIII, and Claire Foy, as Anne Boylen, are fully Rylance's matches, though, and their characters experience no such compunction when it comes to speaking their minds.  Lewis, who riveted us so with his virtue in Band of Brothers, who made us to feel that the good fight could be fought and that decent men may be behind it, gives us an altogether different beast here: a lion, as Cromwell acknowledges, whose claws are always at the ready.  Lions do not make for good friends, and yet, Cromwell himself notes, Henry is his only friend.  (It's hard to have any other friends under the circumstances.)  In one remarkable scene that takes place late in the series, fickle Henry reveals the capriciousness of his own nature by undertaking a series of turns that result in what is, more or less, a casually issued death warrant for his current wife.  The look on Cromwell's face tells us two things: one, that he is aghast at the prospect of having the queen executed, and two, that he foresees his own fate.  If the mercurial king can turn his claws upon one former darling just-like-that, he will still have plenty of claw left for another.  Lewis captures Henry's sense of entitlement--one that knows no bounds, one in which everything can be justified as a manifestation of his kingly will--and yet we have already conceded to Cromwell's perspective, which is that if any good is to come to the British people--to the common people--it is only through this man and his might.  There is simply no way of reconciling oneself to this situation.

Foy's Anne Boylen bears the requisite stamp of haughtiness and imperiousness, but she has more than that.  She has a shrewd but limited intelligence, as well as a sense of entitlement that rivals only that of her consort, but which is all the more daring as it comes from the lower rungs.  When the time comes and aloofness and anger no longer serve any purpose, Anne never reveals any more weakness or fear than is necessary.  There's a respectable dignity about her.  You feel sorry for her.  Cromwell watches on from the crowd below and, in a touching gesture, holds his hand upon his adolescent son's arm when the moment comes.  It's a telling moment.  He's the architect of her demise, but he feels sorry for her, too.  Plus, he's watching his own throat now.  There are all sorts of catharsis going on here.

Tragedy, as Aristotle would have it, ends with the moral ruination or death of the tragic hero.  We have a well-realized sense of moral ruination here, and we know how the story will end.  Cromwell does, too, I would imagine.  Though I have truly enjoyed Mantel's novels and the BBC series, part of me thinks that the story should end here with Anne Boylen's death.  We should have no trouble extrapolating the rest.