Becket (1964)

To see Becket’s weaknesses most clearly, it’s useful to place it next to Derek Jarman’s Sebastiane, released a mere twelve years later. Both are British films about religious martyrdom; both are quite gay, wrapped up in the affection of men for one another. Sebastiane is more overtly gay, as it shows men—is there a single woman in the film?—in the throes of passion and glories quite unabashedly in their naked bodies. But Becket doesn’t shy away from Henry’s desire for Thomas, as is strikingly clear in the scene where Henry compares Thomas to his wife and his mother and finds that both fall short of the affection Thomas has given him.

Yet Becket places “gay” and “religious” on opposite ends of the spectrum: when Thomas becomes archbishop, he gives himself to God, an action that involves the sacrifice of all carnal pleasures—he goes straight. Sebastiane, on the other hand, demonstrates that religious devotion is in fact the gayest thing of all. When Sebastiane refuses Severus’ advances, it’s not because he’s chosen God over flesh; it’s because he’s already sexually devoted to another—no matter that this other is God Himself.

Becket is blind to the fact that religious devotion, at its strongest, manifests itself in great sexual energy and the fulfillment of flesh, not the denial of it. It’s a film with too comfortable an idea of a martyr, fighting for God and his persecuted people instead of giving himself over to some mysterious and holy pleasure.