Elizabeth: The Golden Age


Artykuł pochodzi z pisma "Guardian"

Elizabeth: The Golden Age

Peter Bradshaw
Friday November 2, 2007
The Guardian

 

I've heard of revisionism. But this ... There are, to say the least, some startling moments in this Sellar-and-Yeatman retelling of the story of England's Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I, and her golden years, spent flirting, giving thin and enigmatic smiles, watching masques, and opening up a family-share-sized can of Tudor whup-ass on the Spanish and their beastly Catholic Armada. The story begins in 1585, as Elizabeth must contend with plots directed by Spain's Philip II to topple her with a seaborne invasion.

 

The best bit comes when the Queen, played of course by Cate Blanchett, arrives on horseback on the coast to give her troops an inspirational speech while the Armada's first devilish pixels are digitally visible on the choppy horizon. Gorgeous flame-red tresses caress her shoulders in elaborate plaits: another of her wigs, presumably, because we have already seen her close-cropped head in other private scenes with various ladies of the bedchamber. She is wearing the most strikingly tailored and highly polished armour. It is as if she has thought to herself on the eve of battle: "How can I, by the Grace of God Defender of the Faith, inspire my people to defend these islands and fling the Spaniards' pride back, yea, back in their very teeth? I know! I shall come out dressed as a cross between Pippi Longstocking and Metal Mickey." She does, however, look very good for 55 years old.

Elizabeth is riding man-style, incidentally: astride. Those exquisite armoured pins are either side of the horseflesh. This is very much not the case earlier, in more carefree scenes when she is out riding with her main beau and semi-platonic squeeze Sir Walter Raleigh, played by rugged Clive Owen with a West Country burr that comes and goes.

Here, she's allegedly riding side-saddle, and at a pretty good gallop, what's more. But come on. Blanchett is still sneakily riding astride; her right leg is concealed in the folds of her dress and there's a floppy fake right leg bouncing on the saddle next to the real left leg, like one of the limbs of Rod Hull's Emu. It really is very odd, as if the strain of combating the Papist plots has caused one of the Queen's limbs to dwindle to the mass of a baby leek. Perhaps Blanchett and director Shekhar Kapur will fess up to this contrivance on the DVD, or maybe they will claim that's how the current Queen Elizabeth used to manage it when she still did trooping the colour on horseback.

In the first movie from 1998 about Elizabeth's early life, also directed by Kapur, the Queen's main love affair was with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, played by Joseph Fiennes. But Dudley hasn't been brought back for this sequel, unlike the wily spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham, played by Geoffrey Rush, who has returned for more Olympic-standard skulduggery. No, poor Dudley has been written out of the script, perhaps because audiences would see Fiennes and think the Queen is about to get off with William Shakespeare.

It's Raleigh who is the sole love-interest now: he does the traditional business of taking his cloak (worn asymmetrically over one shoulder) and putting it on a puddle for her dainty foot, and then impulsively arrives at court with all his swag from the new world: two genuine Native Americans, and a trunk containing some potatoes and tobacco. Elizabeth is of course charmed and amused by the forthright adventurer, whose robust masculinity is so thrillingly at variance with the milksops and greybeards at court. She instructs her favourite, Bess Throckmorton (Abbie Cornish), to befriend him, a proxy seduction, in fact. But Bess and Walter fall in love.

Raleigh is to distinguish himself in battle in a remarkable way while on board one of Her Majesty's fire-ships. At the very height of the carnage and confusion, Raleigh actually dives overboard, and we see him swimming somewhere underwater, as lithe and purposeful as a dolphin. What the figgy pudding is Sir Walter doing now? Is he going to attach a rudimentary 16th-century explosive device to the hull of a Spanish ship? Is he going to deliver a box of chocolates to his Queen? Heaven knows. We see him later, quite dry, and nobody refers to his watery dive, or says anything like: my goodness Walter, that water must have been cold, what were you thinking?

Where Kapur's first Elizabeth was cool, cerebral, fascinatingly concerned with complex plotting, the new movie is pitched at the level of a Jean Plaidy romantic novel. Certainly compared to the excellent recent TV version of the same period with Helen Mirren as Elizabeth I and Jeremy Irons as Dudley, it is pretty silly, and Elizabeth's agony over signing Mary Stuart's death warrant is perfunctory.

No one else could carry the role of Elizabeth I now on the big screen; it is a role that Blanchett has made her own, and it's the role that made her career. She certainly has the royal chops: only by playing Katharine Hepburn playing Elizabeth I could she be more imperious. How can Cate top this part? I can see the opening scene now: night ... outside Conservative Party Headquarters in Westminster ... it is 1979 ...

at variance with – w sprzeczności z, niezgodnie z

 beau – piękniś; adorator

carnage - rzeź

choppy – wzburzony, burzliwy; zmienny

contrivance – podstęp; sprytny plan

dainty - delikatny

dwindle – zmniejszać się, ubywać

 exquisite – wyśmienty; przepiękny

fess up – przyznawać się

lithe – gibki, giętki

milksop - oferma

perfunctory – powierzchowny, zdawkowy

proxy – pełnomocnik; pełnomocnictwo

puddle – kałuża; bajoro

skulduggery- machlojki

 tresses - loki

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