How Golden Was Her Age?

I was finally was able to see Eliza­beth: The Golden Age today and was not dis­ap­poin­ted. This a movie worth see­ing at the theatre. The set­tings are sump­tu­ous, superbly shot and Cate Blanchett seems to be able to do no wrong. She is Eliza­beth.
I am stay­ing away from his­tor­ical com­ment­ary here. This is a story for the screen and I appre­ci­ate it as such. How­ever, I will say that I enjoyed the first install­ment ten years ago more. The two install­ments shared the lav­ish set­tings that set Shekhar Kapur apart, but the web of intrigue in the first was much more taut and tense. In the second install­ment, there is far less of ten­sion. Where ten­sion exists, it seems weary or puerile. Rela­tion­ships that may have been mined and explored such as that between Eliza­beth and her cousin Mary Stu­art are left docile and tepid. Mary, who I expec­ted to speak with at least a French accent is unim­pos­ing and a mere dupe (cer­tainly a faint shadow of Fanny Ardant’s Marie de Guise in the first). Although this fits in well with her role vis-a-vis Philip of Spain’s intrigue, this polit­ical and frat­ri­cidal battle between ‘princes who are female’ could have been mined and illu­min­ated the ongo­ing struggle between free-thinkers and Roman Cath­ol­ics. Kapur’s Mary is a stu­pid, unthreat­en­ing vic­tim, and this doesn’t work well — far too simple. The same seems to be true with Philip him­self. While we was por­trayed in a com­mand­ing kingly way in the first, here he is much truer to life as a mildly deformed, uni­foc­u­lar grandee bent on world dom­in­a­tion. This is not bad. How­ever, the intro­duc­tion of his young daugh­ter is dis­tract­ing. Her story and intro­duc­tion do not seem to lend to the story at hand and seems dis­join­ted. Are we to sense that Philip is simply try­ing to provide for her inher­it­ance? — eg. “How would you like to be Queen of England?”

We all know that the Armada will come and there is little or no build up to this point in the film, and takes far too long to appear. When watch­ing I grew rather frus­trated wait­ing for the even­tu­al­ity and sens­ing that a silly love story was get­ting in the way — a story far too detailed and without a sweep­ing grandeur. The armada battle sequences are gen­er­ally well shot and delivered, but the sense of scale is lost with this story being such a brief foray. The ten­sion that we lack else­where could have been very skill­fully built here. In gen­eral, scenes are superbly com­posed and shot well and we have some of those won­der­ful shots from far above, redu­cing indi­vidu­als to a smal­ler scale and estab­lish­ing that lar­ger forces are at work. We also have more shot from below (the swim­ming horse was intriguingly ori­ginal), and his use of light is amaz­ing. Eliza­beth in her white grandeur at the end is spectacular.

On the other hand, Kapur seems to have grown fond of ‘key­hole’ type shots in this ver­sion, and I am not sure they work. Is there an unseen watcher? What is the import­ance of these vant­age points? We peer through gaps in the stone­work and win­dows cells that seem to dis­tract from rather than lend to the visual effect.

Non­ethe­less this is a cru­cial part of the story that Kapur has chosen to tell and it is a good story. As always, Blanchett is superb. She is able to catch the tre­mend­ous vul­ner­ab­il­ity, tem­pes­tu­ous wrath and supreme power that Eliza­beth was. The char­ac­ter has been sub­stan­tially ela­bour­ated and the rela­tion­ship with Walsing­ham sim­il­arly expan­ded. Rush is of course also strong in his role and we get to see some signs of his weak­ness as well, pos­sibly miss­ing from the earlier exploration.

I was also look­ing for­ward to Elizabeth’s speech on the bat­tle­field and Kapur handles it well. This was a pivotal moment for Bri­tain and Eliza­beth deliv­ers a superb exhorta­tion to her troops to defend Eng­land or die try­ing. But I am left without a sense of panic or of ruth­less determ­in­a­tion on the part of the assembled mili­tias. How were they feel­ing? Were they actu­ally inspired? There faces are blank. I think I will be forever spoiled by Brannagh’s deliv­ery in Henry V. How to live up to that. Blanchett comes close.

My favour­ite scene is the stolen kiss with Raleigh. It cap­tures much of the essence of the mon­arch trapped in her role, but yearn­ing to escape. The light­ing, the tim­ing, the music and the restric­ted moment is handled with tre­mend­ous abil­ity. The role of Bess is also well handled, and its tough to live in the glow of Eliza­beth. But we feel for her chief lady-in-waiting and closest thing to a friend. She is unsay­ingly charged to live for Eliza­beth, to serve her, but seek the exper­i­ence she can­not have. She suc­ceeds and acts as she feels she must, restric­ted by her loy­alty, but also a mere mortal.

As with all, I expect that much mater­ial ended up on the cut­ting room floor and look for­ward to a director’s cut to truly appre­ci­ate Kapur’s vis­ion. The chan­ging col­our and tone as the movie pro­gresses is subtle, but impressive.

Clive Owen is well cast as Raleigh, as is Drake, although I sense that a bal­ance between the two might have been estab­lished. And where are Elizabeth’s other advisers? Where we had a much more vul­ner­able young woman in a man’s world, out­side of Walsing­ham, Raleigh and Dee (a superb addi­tion) we find face­less, point­less drones. Mary’s gaoler has the secur­ity sense of a veget­able strainer and every­one seems to stand around wait­ing for some­thing to hap­pen. I sense again that this was in the cause of sim­pli­fic­a­tion and this is an unfor­tu­nate choice.

All in all, this story lacks some of the com­plex­ity of the first. It is as if it was dumbed down and the private life is over­em­phas­ized to deter­ment of see­ing Eliza­beth as mon­arch and embod­i­ment of the nation. I am sure there is some inten­tion in this, if only simply to rein­force that she is a mor­tal, thrust into a role that she is not pre­pared to adopt. She finds strength from vari­ous sources and does rise to the occa­sion, but not before hav­ing her resolve tested.

I don’t want to in any­way lead you to believe that I wasn’t entirely thrilled with the pro­duc­tion. I point to the short­com­ings because I have set this dir­ector and his abil­ity on a very high ped­es­tal. I haven’t been drawn to the theatre in a year. This is a movie that attrac­ted and left me feel­ing very sat­is­fied. Its largely per­fectly cast, the determ­in­a­tion to explore Elizabeth’s char­ac­ter suc­cess­ful and a visual treat. I look for­ward to the director’s cut and would heart­ily recom­mend this most excel­lent movie to any­one head­ing for the theatre.