ELIZABETH by DeWyNGaLe Rating: A+
Elizabeth is the tale of Queen Elizabeth and her reign over England. Cate Blanchett plays the part of Elizabeth, who has a lot of problems in her life. Elizabeth has been accused of a crime and is threatened with the death penalty. The problem is that she is next in line to become the Queen of England. When her sister dies, she will become queen. The only way she won't become queen is if her sister decides to put her to death. Her sister dies before she can make the decision, and Elizabeth takes the thrown.
Elizabeth is extremely educational for children who don't know about the story of Queen Elizabeth and her rule over England. Elizabeth was like a history text book, only a lot more interesting and fun to watch. If it wasn't rated R, many kids should see this moving and extremely educational story. Elizabeth ruled for over forty years, and people still talk about the great leader. In the film, we see why she is loved by so many people. The way Elizabeth set things up way back when is still the way things go in England.
When Elizabeth comes to take power over England, she is a little overwhelmed. She is faced with making speeches, making important decisions, and pleasing all of her people. She is certainly a leader with a sense of humor. She keeps the people entertained, but she does her job at the same time. Some people do not like the decisions that Elizabeth is making. A few attempts of murder have been made towards Elizabeth. This is a very hard time for Elizabeth.
Everyone is forcing Elizabeth to marry. She doesn't want to marry anyone, but if she did marry someone it would by Lord Robert, played by Joseph Fiennes. He has been with Elizabeth for a long time, even before she became queen. His performance is very strong, and it only adds to the greatness of the film. The King of Spain is also trying to marry Elizabeth. She decides she doesn't want to be with anyone, and she will avoid men from now on. She shaves her head because she does not want to be attractive at all. She doesn't want to be married or to be with any man.
The costumes in Elizabeth are outstanding. Elizabeth's wardrobe is very impressive ranging from extremely colorful dresses to very dull ones. All of them look very realistic. The scenery is also realistic. A lot of time and effort was put towards the wonderful scenery pieces. The castles in which many people live are very nicely put together. It looked like the movie was shot back then, and it wasn't a recreation of the whole thing. The film is very dark and serious, and I liked that a lot. There was little humor to it all, which made it even more powerful. Elizabeth shows how scary it was back in those times. Large numbers of people are tortured by Elizabeth's decisions.
The best part of the entire film was Cate Blanchett's performance as Elizabeth. It was very surprising, considering that we don't see her in movies that often. Cate Blanchett's performance as the Queen Elizabeth was the best acting performance of 1998. Blanchett deserves an Oscar for the difficult role she played. She made you feel Elizabeth's pain about the tough positions she was being put into. The performance given by Blanchett was extremely moving and powerful. Her performance brought a lot into the movie, and if another actress were to play her, I'm not sure if it would have worked.
The Bottom Line- It was as golden as the story it told.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews