Diang Kameluh

A Kit Marlowe-like adaptation of Jean Anouilh's play "Becket or The Honour of God" with gorgeous long-shots of sweeping landscape and muted colours narrating the historic, tumultuous relationship and an eventual dramatic breakup between two men: The Archbishop of Canterbury St. Thomas Becket and King Henry II of England; thematically it is a Saxon-Norman ethnic clash of superiority, the first monarch/state-church pregorative dispute of England in High Medieval Age. An ambitious premise with emotionally-raw, classically hellraiser powerhouse performance by restrained Richard Burton and roguish Peter O'Toole. Undeniably ethnocentric and filled with provocative statements. An obsessive-compulsively psychosexual glimpse into the workings of Church-State Power and an idiosyncratic albeit colourful depiction of The Becket Controversy during King Henry II's reign of 1163-1170