Elizabeth
Director: Shekhar Kapur.
Starring: Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush, Christopher Eccleston, Joseph Fiennes, Richard Attenborough.
Well, everything good you've heard about Elizabeth is true. It's a visually stunning movie with the most incredible performances from everyone involved. This is definitely a masterpiece with only one or two minor quibbles. Most certainly something that must be viewed on the big screen.
Cate Blanchett, as everyone has noted, is magnificent in the role of Elizabeth. She's fun, she's haughty, she's naive, she's strong at all the right times, making an Elizabeth who's believable and sympathetic while at the some time being something of a hero.
And Geoffrey Rush is the best I've ever seen him, with perhaps the exception of A Little Bit of Soul. His Walsingham is a wonderful mentor for Elizabeth, with the ruthlessness necessary to get the job done. Similarly, Christopher Eccleston and Joseph Fiennes play their roles magnificently. I had a minor problem with Richard Attenborough, mainly because I feel he plays the exact same role, no matter what movie he's in. As I watched him in Elizabeth, I kept having visions of the guy who owned Jurassic Park!
The biggest problem I have with this film is a problem inherent with almost all historical movies: what is truth? To tell a good story, often facts need to be manipulated, or extra people added. Douglas Adams once said that he never got his books from real life because although real life provides interesting little incidents, it rarely produces a beginning, a middle and an end. So, for Elizabeth, choices need to be made as to what to show and what to leave out; which bits of the life of Elizabeth are going to make up the movie; what is the beginning, the middle and the end? Similarly, if Elizabeth is our hero, who is our villain?
Elizabeth makes Norfolk (Christopher Eccleston) and the Catholic Church the villain. While not arguing with the atrocities committed by the Catholic Church in that and many other eras, this movie suggests very strongly that any evil our heros did, they were driven to by villainy of others. My history of this period is not good enough to know for certain, but I doubt that Elizabeth was quite as blameless as shown. I imagine it would be possible to make a movie of the life of Norfolk, making him a hero and Elizabeth the villain if we make different choices about what to show.
While on the topic of historical accuracy, one wonders whether there were quite so many tall, willowy females in the court of Queen Elizabeth.
Also, at times, the music threatened to swallow us all. There were moments in the film when a less strident approach would have been more suited to the moment. Any time where I notice the music in a way that distracts from whatever is happening on the screen is a bad music moment for me - and there were half a dozen such moments in Elizabeth.
Be warned, however, this is not a Jane Austen period drama; this is very gory stuff. The opening scene, for me, was the worst, more in tone than gore. It begins with three people being burnt alive at the stake. Very horrific. Later scenes of heads on sticks, slashed throats, beatings, all contribute to a very dark mood for Elizabeth, matching probably the mood of the times. If you can stomach the gruesomeness of this move, I wholeheartedly recommend it.
Rating: D
--
Nicole Lesley email: nikki@cs.usyd.edu.au
"The world won't end in darkness,
it'll end in family fun"
The Beautiful South, One God.
Ratings System
HD: High Distinction D: Distinction CR: Credit P: Pass CP: Conceded Pass F: Fail
review page: http://www.cs.usyd.edu.au/~nikki/m_r/Intro.html
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