Spike is Best

I've always preferred The Day of the Jackal to A Man For All Seasons. The latter got fair play at home when growing up, as it does in a lot of Catholic households, and watching it the first time I was like, "Man, this guy is impeccable, unimpeachable! He's a tight, tight, well-oiled morality-in-action machine! He's fantastic! Super, super spotless!" while the dim shadow running alongside was like, "Huh, imagine that."

Every once in a while the scene comes to mind - from the atheist playwright's own words the film was based upon - you know the one with the "hard-hitting" super-truth monologue from Thomas to his Neo-Marxist future son-in-law - and it's like "Something, something something, and where would you stand then in the winds that would blow!!!" and I'm all like "Yeah, Yeah! That's it! You tell it to Meathead, Archie!"

But the Day of the Jackal is just more of a film. Not a morality play managing the medium of film using a historic figure canonized by the Catholic Church as a puppet for rather cut-and-dry depictions of conscience. That's the way plays work, or mediocre plays I suppose. I'm only going by the film, since I haven't watched the play; but it's kind of like, well, it's not much interesting to watch a diamond being formed under pressure, when it's already a diamond to begin with. Yawn. I'm pretty sure the film adaptation of A Man For All Seasons - the attempt to copy that play's impeccable fictional representation - is responsible for a good deal of the self-absorbed promethean neo-pelagianism one encounters today in rigorist Catholics.