On 2010-03-13 R. Swanson, New Mexico wrote: I didn´t see the film when it appeared in theaters; I avoided anything starring Charlton Heston. For some reason, though, I picked this up from the library and hesitantly put it in the dvd player, knowing I could eject it at any moment.
It opens with a lovely presentation of the sculpture of Michaelangelo which captured me and kept me watching through the feature. Heston was not a bad as I had feared, although he does portray more agony than ecstasy. I kept thinking that he must have had happy moments since he lived till his upper 80´s and no one could survive that many years of constant torment. However we don´t know how much of the film is real and how much is fiction. That´s the problem. It gave me enough of a taste of the political situation of the time to want to know the truth, but here we have to be satisfied with Hollywood´s version.
Rex Harrison was an unexpected pleasure as the Pope, Michaelangelo´s adversary and benefactor. I found him to be much more engaging and convincing in his unsympathetic role than Heston as the hero. There is a minor character, a woman in the Medici family, who is in love with Michaelangelo and helps him during various times of crisis. I wondered how much of that was true, but again, for historical accuracy one must look elsewhere.
It is visually quite splendid and the plot moves right along. The shots of the Sistine chapel are a treat. There are a few scenes that stand out and make this more than a docu-drama of ´How the Sistine Chapel was Painted.´ One is the scene where MA, in the mountains, while hiding out from the Pope, has a sort of cloudy vision which gives him the idea of how to paint the chapel. It could have been corny, and well, maybe it was a little, but I found it actually quite well done, if not actually inspiring.
The best scene was one where the Pope, badly injured from battle, has managed to climb up the scaffolding at night by himself, to inspect the painting. MA finds him up there, with his candle, peering at the image of God. There follows a conversation which probably never happened, but was a nice idea, in which MA assures the Pope that God is loving, not hateful and that man is essentially innocent. These happy thoughts seem tacked on to please the viewers but what was genuinely moving was to see the old, cranky Pope actually loving the painting.
If you are not hooked on historical accuracy and are willing to see Charlton Heston look pained for several hours, you may enjoy this film. If nothing else it gives us a huge appreciation for the difficulties of painting this wonderful work. . And summed up by saying Good show. Currently The Agony and the Ecstasy has an overall rating of 8 over 10.
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20th Century Fox claimed Charlton Heston and Rex Harrison portray two of the Renaissance´s most colorful figures in this historical drama based on Irving Stone´s best-seller set in the early 16th century. When Pope Julius ll (Harrison) commissions Michelangelo (Heston) to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, the artist initially refuses. Virtually forced to do the job by Julius, he later destroys his own work and flees to Rome. Eventually resumed, the project becomes a battle of wills fueled by artistic and temperamental differences that form the core of this movie. Nominated for an Oscar® Cinematography and named one of the year´s best films by the National Board of Review.
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