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Wolf Hall (2015)

2015 · Biography,Drama,History · historical-period, political-drama

Wolf Hall poster

Wolf Hall is a slow-burning, intellectually rigorous BBC prestige drama adapting Hilary Mantel's acclaimed Tudor novels, centered on Thomas Cromwell's rise through Henry VIII's court. Its signature is restraint: Mark Rylance's quietly magnetic performance, candlelit cinematography evoking Dutch Old Master painting, and scripts that resist the temptation to modernize historical morality. The show rewards viewers who want to inhabit the texture and logic of a genuinely foreign past rather than see it filtered through contemporary sensibilities. It is dialogue-driven, psychologically dense, and anchored in a single character whose inner life is perpetually legible yet never fully revealed — a portrait of political intelligence operating under constant existential threat.

From the reviewers

Mark Rylance is simply superb as Cromwell, and most of the other actors offer a convincing interpretation of their roles, especially Claire Foy as Anne Boleyn, the minor noblewoman who punches above her weight all the way to the chopping block.
Cromwell literally lurks in the shadows helped with all that candlelight.
The programme is like a series of old master paintings, the people inhabiting these settings totally realistic and believable.
That there is always something going on in his head is evident, but what is all the more intriguing is that we can't quite tell what it is . . .
I'm not sure why Peter Kosminsky, whose work I very much rate, has gone for hand held camera work in what is essentially a static shot. I have no problem with hand-held camera work per se, but the reasons for its use in a wide shot are lost on me, and the result is a slightly irritating amount of camera shake.

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