Is this truly a day of independence?

There are few spectacles more tragic—or more divine—than the slow, incandescent erosion of a gifted soul. Mr. Burton, the 2025 cinematic meditation on the life of Richard Burton, is not merely a film, nor even a biographical retelling—it is a grand threnody to the soul of man burdened with greatness. And in the hands of Harry Lawtey, that burden becomes a thing of unspeakable majesty.

The modern biopic, more often than not, leans toward an unwholesome gluttony. It gorges itself on costume, scandal, and period furniture, believing that verisimilitude lies in mimicry and plot. But Mr. Burton does something entirely different—something braver and more sacred. It looks not at what Richard Burton did, but who he became beneath the armour of theatrical success and tabloid fame. It trades narrative for revelation, choosing to illuminate not the chronology of a life, but the contours of a soul at war with itself.

At the heart of this ecclesiastical venture stands Harry Lawtey, whose performance is not a portrayal, but a transfiguration. There is no artifice, no strain, no desperate thespian showboating. Rather, Lawtey descends—yes, descends—into the infernal crevices of Burton’s torment, bringing back with him the fire of a man who could command Lear with the voice of a god, yet crumbled like dust before his own reflection. Lawtey’s eyes alone, in moments of silence, achieve more than most entire scripts manage with armies of words. He has not studied Burton to impersonate him; he has become Burton to understand him. This, I daresay, is not acting. This is theology.

But let us speak honestly about what Mr. Burton dares to depict: the unbearable paradox of genius. Burton, as presented here, is no hero. He is no villain either. He is a man—flesh and folly, thunder and ruin. He drinks not only from bottles but from the poisoned chalice of his own fame. He hungers, not for applause, but for absolution. The film does not sanctify him, nor does it crucify him; it reveals him. It allows him to remain unsolved, unredeemed, and therefore unforgettably human.

The film’s direction, far from overreaching, shows the wisdom of restraint. The camera lingers not to flatter but to confess. Scenes unfold not with orchestral grandeur, but with the hush of liturgy. We are given time—not to consume Burton, but to contemplate him. The cinematography understands darkness—not merely as an absence of light, but as the necessary cradle in which certain truths must be born. The script, elegant and sparse, often withholds more than it delivers, inviting the viewer into that rarest of cinematic experiences: listening.

It would be an injustice, however, to speak only of Burton the man, or Lawtey the vessel. One must also consider Mr. Burton as an argument against our age’s obsession with clarity. In a world that demands every story be neat, every personality either saint or scoundrel, this film dares to suggest that the most vital lives are those that remain unresolved. It reminds us that the human being is not a thesis to be proven, but a psalm to be wrestled with.

What Lawtey achieves here will be studied—must be studied—for decades to come. Not for its technique (though it is rich with it), nor for its resemblance (though it is uncanny), but for its courage. He has looked into the abyss of a man both beloved and broken, and rather than flinch or romanticise, he has remained. And in doing so, he has given us not simply Richard Burton, but a mirror into ourselves.

In the final analysis, Mr. Burton is not about fame or theatre or self-destruction. It is about the divine terror of being known—by others, by history, by Providence, and most of all, by oneself. It is a film one does not watch, but survives. And when the last scene fades, what remains is not applause, nor even sorrow, but silence—the kind of silence one finds in old churches and ruined cathedrals. The silence of something holy having passed through.

A bloody fucking miraculous feat, indeed, if I may be forgiven the phrase.

THE WORLD THAT FORGOT ITS SOUL

An Essay on the Erosion of Civilisation by Materialism, Greed, and the Modern Self

The media proclaims, with all the hyperbolic despair of a Shakespearean chorus, that London is no longer safe. It mourns, with equal dramatic flourish, that Bangalore has lost its lustre. Yet I ask, with the simplicity of plain reason: how does a city lose its honour or identity? What is a city, if not a theatre of the human will—a collection of stone and steel, made animate only by the virtues or vices of its inhabitants? When a city falls into moral disrepair, it is not the pavement that cracks first, but the conscience of the people who walk upon it. The collapse of civilisation begins not with bomb blasts or economic downturns, but with the quiet corrosion of the soul.

Let us, then, put aside this melodramatic blaming of places and examine the players. The men and women who inhabit our cities are angry—no longer righteously indignant, but recklessly inflamed. Their wrath is not the moral fire of justice but the scorched earth of ungoverned desire. They dwell in a world that has systematically unlearned the discipline of restraint, the wisdom of silence, and the beauty of sufficiency. Their minds are daily shaped not by truth, nor even by tradition, but by the ceaseless grind of media and machinery that glorify possession and scorn reflection.

This is not a new affliction. It is simply the oldest human temptation dressed in modern attire. From the golden calves of Sinai to the palaces of Versailles, from the East India Company’s ravenous trade routes to the advertising billboards of Times Square, mankind has never lacked for idols. The only difference now is that the idols are not merely outside us—they have taken up residence within. Greed, once a sin, is now called ambition. Selfishness, once a vice, is now rebranded as self-care. The soul, once the compass of civilisation, is now dismissed as an inconvenience—unscientific, unverifiable, and thus expendable.

This is the peculiar triumph of modernity: the belief that the human being is complete without the soul. That progress is possible without virtue. That happiness is the accumulation of things, and not the cultivation of character. But this doctrine, seductive though it is, produces not joy but frenzy. The modern man is perpetually chasing more—more money, more influence, more spectacle—yet finds himself emptier with every acquisition. He mistakes velocity for vitality, and in doing so, reduces life to a transaction.

And what, precisely, has this pursuit of materialism achieved? We have built taller towers, yet grown too afraid to speak from the pulpit of truth. We have stitched the world together with fibre-optic cables, yet remain more alienated than ever before. We have turned knowledge into data, and data into profit, but our wisdom lies buried under metrics. There is more communication, and less communion; more consumption, and less contentment.

History, that stern tutor of nations, warns us what becomes of civilisations that forget their metaphysical foundations. The Roman Empire did not collapse merely because of barbarian invasions—it rotted from within, first morally, then institutionally. Its elite became obsessed with luxury; its citizens with bread and circuses. Athens, too, which once gave the world Socrates and Sophocles, degenerated into a mob ruled by sophistry and spectacle. In both cases, the decline of thought preceded the decline of order. The death of the inner life preceded the death of the public square.

Today we are witnessing a similar implosion, only clothed in corporate jargon and digital glamour. The modern man has learned to monetise everything except meaning. We have learned to colonise space, but cannot govern our own impulses. The true danger of our time is not nuclear war, nor even ecological disaster—it is the hollowing out of humanity. For a world without restraint is like a ship without ballast: swift, impressive, and fatally unstable.

Let us now ask, what is the antidote? Can this march toward oblivion be arrested? It can—but only by a renaissance of the soul. We must once more teach our children to distinguish between want and need, between pleasure and goodness, between influence and integrity. We must recover the idea that a human being is not merely a consumer but a creature made in the image of something higher than himself. We must reclaim the vocabulary of the sacred—words like duty, honour, sacrifice, and truth—not as relics of a dusty past, but as the cornerstones of any future worth living.

There must also be a reawakening of humility, that forgotten virtue which once tethered empires to conscience. It is humility that teaches us that not all opinions are equal, that wisdom does not reside in noise, and that to be civilised is not merely to be efficient but to be reverent. For civilisation, properly understood, is the outward form of inward grace. Strip away that grace, and all you have left is a skeleton of buildings and a chaos of appetites.

If we are to be saved—not merely as cities but as a species—we must relearn how to think, how to feel, and above all, how to be human. And this, I fear, cannot be legislated by governments nor engineered by technology. It begins in the quiet places: in literature and liturgy, in art and taciturnity, in the difficult but necessary work of self-examination. It begins in the refusal to participate in the hysteria of acquisition. It begins in every choice to seek truth over trend, meaning over comfort, and community over ego.

The world will not be saved by policies alone, but by persons. Let each man become a citadel of sanity. Let each woman reclaim her sacred worth. Then, perhaps, our cities may again be clothed with honour—not because of what they contain, but because of what their people have remembered.

Let them remember this: a civilisation is not a place, but a posture of the soul.