Saturday Night At The Movies
Thin Lizzie
By Dennis Hartley
Alas and anon…just when you thought it was safe to assemble an armada and go back into the water, someone goes and produces another costumer concerning a certain virgin queen. Bollywood director Shekhar Kapur has re-enlisted co-conspirators Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush for one more go at the old girl in “Elizabeth: The Golden Age”.
Picking up a few decades hence from where he left off in his outstanding 1998 film “Elizabeth”, which depicted the ascendancy of the title character, Kapur cheekily condenses a turbulent and historically significant 4-year period (1585-1588) during the reign of Elizabeth I into what appears to be a rather eventful week in the life of HRM.
As the film opens, we are introduced to a much more wary and care-worn monarch (an alarmingly thin Blanchett) holding court over England’s destiny. Gone is the radiant, rosy-cheeked and free-spirited “Bess” who lit up the screen in the previous film; she has been replaced by a mercurial, slightly paranoid monarch who is constantly on guard against duplicitous well-wishers and sycophants. Even her closest confidants are kept at arm’s length, especially her Machiavellian “spymaster”, Sir Francis Walsingham (Rush).
The Queen has two big headaches keeping her on edge. The first is her cousin, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland (Samantha Morton, in a fiercely intense performance) who feels she is the rightful heir to the English throne, not the childless “bastard” Elizabeth (who is a Protestant to boot). Mary has some influential Catholic sympathizers at home and abroad, including the other royal pain in Elizabeth’s derriere, King Philip II of Spain (Jordi Molla), who gets his jollies jeering at the English queen and rattling his saber.
Elizabeth finds a temporary distraction from all her political woes when the dashing adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen, in all his rangy glory) strolls into her court, full of tales and loaded with booty from his latest excursion to the New World. Elizabeth is obviously charmed, but has to suppress her schoolgirl crush for sake of appearances. However, when she learns that Raleigh has fathered a child and secretly eloped with her favorite chambermaid, Bess Throckmorton (Abbie Cornish) she is not so amused, and gives him a nice cozy jail cell to explore for a few years. Not to worry, however-history intervenes and the Queen pardons Raleigh in time to put him in charge of naval defenses in the year of the Armada (1588), which fuels the film’s climatic battle scenes.
I have to warn you, this is one of those “historical” epics where you have to make a decision going in whether you are going to nitpick and get cranky and argumentative over factual inaccuracies and behavioral anachronisms, or just sit back for two hours and enjoy the opulent pageantry and bodice-ripping court intrigue with a shit-eating grin on your face. Keep in mind that the screenplay was authored by William Nicholson, who scripted the (very) loose re-interpretation of the Camelot legend, “ First Knight
Kapur does seem indecisive at times; it’s as if he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to make an updated version of “Fire Over England
If you are a fan of the genre, you will likely be pleased. Blanchett is excellent in the lead role, and Owen is charismatic as always. Rush is good, although his character is a bit one-dimensional (not his fault). One thing for sure-this should be the last of Liz the First for a while. Right? Tell me there isn’t another one in pre-production. Prithee, tell me.
Go, little queenie: Elizabeth I
.