Andrew Worsdale Movie of the week
The 16th century is back in vogue, what with Shakespeare in Love and Elizabeth being released within weeks of each other and both up for loads of Oscars.
Both are independent films and boast amazing production design, great performances and assured direction. Shakespeare in Love is the comedy, while Elizabeth is a Jacobean-like soap opera filled with intrigue, romance, betrayal and, of course, the natural outcome of all this nastiness, murder.
Cate Blanchett gives an outstanding performance as Elizabeth, the 16-year-old Protestant princess – daughter of Henry VIII and sister of the Catholic Queen Mary (Kathy Burke).
At first the young Elizabeth is cast aside because of her religion. She is happy enough because she has her childhood sweetheart, Robert Dudley (played by Joseph Fiennes), at her side. When Mary dies, Elizabeth is crowned queen, much to the ire of Mary-loyalist, the duke of Norfolk (played by Christopher Eccleston).
Elizabeth is encouraged by her bumbling adviser, Sir William Cecil (Richard Attenborough), to marry either the king of Spain or France’s duc d’Anjou (a flamboyant and funny Vincent Cassel). She flouts convention by openly flirting with Dudley, the love of her life. But the machinations of love are soon overcome by power struggles, and as her rule is undermined, Elizabeth turns to Sir Francis Walshingham, the master of spies (a dark and intriguing performance from Geoffrey Rush).
As the risk of assassination and the end of her reign come closer, Elizabeth decides to take control and take revenge on her enemies.
Director Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth is a gripping film. Imagine The Bold and the Beautiful meeting The Godfather in 1588 and you’ll get an idea of what the movie is like.
Kapur’s talent was first recognised with
his controversial biopic of Phoolan Devi, Bandit Queen. It told the tale of India’s living folk legend, a woman who slaughtered 30 men to avenge her rape and the murder of her lover, stole from the rich to give to the poor and was soon seen as an avenging angel for the dispossessed.
The film showed Kapur’s strength at creating luscious images, eliciting strong performances and framing a tough story around strong production values. There’s no difference in Elizabeth. In fact, it is possibly even more engrossing and certainly more luscious to look at than Bandit Queen.
Cinematographer Remi Adefarasin’s swirling camera is in constant motion. The opening shot, which sweeps down on a group of heretics burning at the stake, is vertiginous in the extreme and the images never let up on their kinetic motion.
Production designer John Myhre complements the lens with his sombre colours and heavy stone interiors, which in turn are given contrast by the glorious colour palette of the costumes by Alexandra Byrne.
Michael Hirst’s script explores the court machinations against the background of feminism. Elizabeth is seen as a shrewd, demonstrative, advanced thinker who changed from a smart but vigilant woman into a powerful creature of her own invention who refused to bow to any man. In fact, she comes across as so forceful that the romance with Dudley is the weakest part of the movie. Fiennes’s character seems weak- willed and insipid against his formidable lover.
Blanchett, who won a Golden Globe Award for the role and is nominated for an Oscar as best actress, slips into the role with mastery. At some points flirtatious, at others powerful, her angularity is devastatingly beautiful.
Other actresses have played the part. Perhaps the best known is Bette Davis in Michael Curtiz’s The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, in which she portrayed the queen as waspish and tightly controlled. Glenda Jackson took on the role in Charles Jarrott’s Mary, Queen of Scots and displayed a very tetchy monarch. Unfortunately she was overshadowed by Vanessa Redgrave as the prowling Mary Stuart determined to take over the English throne. Even real-life “queen” Quentin Crisp took on the mantle in Sally Potter’s Orlando.
Women of independence and power have been a constant theme in films. In Bruno Nuyten’s Camille Claudel, Isabelle Adjani played a sculptress who was driven to insanity because of her desire to be autonomous in a male- dominated world. Judy Davis was a poor farming girl who resolved to become a writer despite pressures to marry and be a “wife” in Gillian Armstrong’s My Brilliant Career. Sally Field won an Oscar for her role in Norma Rae, Martin Ritt’s mawkish movie which had her as a union activist fighting a patriarchal factory management.
Of late, however, strong women’s roles have been devoted to stories of cancer and suffering. Diane Keaton in Marvin’s Room and Susan Sarandon in Stepmom both succumb to sickly lymph glands with feminist stoicism.
So it’s great to see a film like Elizabeth, with our heroine cutting her obsequious male dominated Parliament down to size with wickedly cynical wit, sexily dancing or mowing down her opponents as if she was wielding an AK-47. This clearly contemporary Elizabeth rules, and Kapur, his cast and crew revel in telling her story.