Elizabeth – 1998
This was a good movie. It isn’t the kind of movie I’d want to watch over and over again, but it was very entertaining. The pace was a little slow, but only a little. There was some pretty incredible acting, some great costumes, a number of historical inaccuracies, a great score, and an intense and interesting plot. As you might have guessed from the title, the movie is about Elizabeth I, played by Kate Blanchett. It covers the Queen’s rise to the throne and her first few years as the reigning monarch.
I’ll quickly get the historical inaccuracies out of the way first. Most of them deal with the timeline of events. The movie takes events that happened in Queen Elizabeth’s 45 year reign and presented them as if they all took place in the first 5 years. They also scrambled the order of a couple of events. They also exaggerated certain events and characters to make them more interesting than reality. And the invented a few personality traits and motivations for the sake of a more dramatic story. But they kept in enough truth to satisfy most viewers.
Blanchett was fantastic as Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen. Now, of course, she wasn’t actually a virgin. She’d been having an affair with Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, played by Joseph Fiennes. But when her half-sister, Queen Mary I of England, expertly played by Kathy Burke, died of cancer, Elizabeth, who had been imprisoned in The Tower, is elevated to the throne. But it is made clear that her Protestant religious affiliations and her sexual relations with Robert were unpopular with a lot of people.
Among her enemies were Thomas Howard, the 4th Duke of Norfolk, played by Christopher Eccleston, Mary of Guise, played by Fanny Ardant, Pope Pius V, played by John Gielgud, an assassin monk, John Ballard, played by Daniel Craig, The Earl of Sussex, played by Jamie Foreman, Alvarado de le Quadra, the Spanish ambassador, played by James Frain, and Monsieur de Foix, the French Ambassador, and the French suiter named Henry, the Duke d’Anjou, played by Vincent Cassel. Her friends were William Cecil, played by Richard Attenborough, Francis Walsingham, played by Geoffrey Rush, several ladies in waiting, one of whom was played by Kelly McDonald, and Robert Dudley, of course.
They all did just fine in their acting, but the only ones that really mattered were Thomas Howard, Francis Walsingham, and Robert Dudley. And here is the short version of the plot. After Elizabeth becomes Queen, her enemies seek to have her assassinated. But she has Walsingham as her personal protector and advisor. After several failed attempts on her life, Walsingham, at Elizabeth’s acquiescence, systematically finds and executes all her enemies except the pope. Elizabeth now has a guilt-ridden conscience, but an unopposed monarchy. In an attempt to separate herself from the necessary bloodshed, she cuts off all her hair, puts on lead makeup that makes her appear to be made of stone, and proclaims herself a virgin. The end. Long live the Queen.
There were some very good performances, and a few intense scenes, but nothing to blow your socks off. The most interesting parts of the movie were the dangerous scheming and intrigue that seemed to surround Elizabeth. It seemed to be difficult for her to know who to trust. Everybody pressed her to marry and produce an heir, but she never saw the need. She was determined to rule on her own. Blanchett’s performance was powerful, and yet you could always see the frail humanity behind her bold exterior. In fact, it was good enough to earn her a nomination for Best Actress, though she did not win.
Eccleston and Rush both did well and deserve to me recognized. Their characters both seemed to be knights on opposing sides of the board. And they seemed to be evenly matched until Walsingham began slaughtering people. They both performed their parts with a seriousness and a gravitas that was quite engaging. Fiennes was alright, but somehow I expected a little more from him.
As I mentioned, the costumes were absolutely fantastic. The attention to detail was amazing. Some of the clothes, like the gown Elizabeth wore in her coronation scene, were based on actual paintings of the events. The costuming was beautiful and Blanchett looked gorgeous. And I have to make special mention of the wonderful filming locations and beautiful cinematography. And the haunting score by David Hirschfelder was perfect to set the tone for the film’s bloody climax.
But I have to mention one thing that bugged me a little. Elizabeth’s French suitor was portrayed as a lecherous man with a penchant for cross-dressing. Apparently this was completely untrue, and I’m going to set the record straight. Not only did Elizabeth never actually meet him in real life, there is no evidence that he ever wore women’s clothes, either in public or in private. When I see something as random as that, I have to wonder why the director, Shekhar Kapur, decided that it needed to be in the film.