and curse Sir Walter Raleigh -- he was such a stupid git
Things about 'Elizabeth: The Golden Age' (as viewed by one prof and two ABDs, all of whom are early modernists). Contains things that are probably spoilers if you don't want to know exactly how the movie handles its plot.
1. We started giggling when the opening text crawl said that "holy war rages across Europe, and only England stands against Spain" -- there, now you've upset the brave little toasters Dutch Protestants, movie -- and never really managed to stop.
2. I was impressed by the way they managed to work variations on a theme of "bastard devil whorebitch" into every single line of dialogue spoken by Philip II. Who was completely if unintentionally hilarious.
3. The overwhelming impression given by the scenes set in Spain is that Spain is actually Mordor. (And, okay -- when you are an early modernist you get used to "Catholicism = Eeeeeeeeeevil" rhetoric, but this movie laid it on thickly and hamhandedly enough to actually make me kind of uncomfortable. I mean, it's one thing if you're Edmund Spenser, but these filmmakers are in no way Edmund Spenser.)
4. For all the things wrong with this movie, and there are many, Cate Blanchett is still hot.
5. But she couldn't save the movie from its dumb script, which sort of lurched along episodically in a rather rushed fashion without really making the events and the characterization cohere. It was sort of "okay, here are some ev0l Spaniards! And here's Elizabeth being badass! But now she's all weepy offstage because as the Virgin Queen she can't get laid! And now she's being all pissy and stupid about it!"
6. Which, okay, I get that the movie's doing this whole "Elizabeth was a badass but underneath it all she was anxious and lonely" thing, which is fine because, okay, she probably was, but I'm not sure that having her express this by behaving like an ill-tempered high school girl around Ralegh is really the best way of accomplishing that characterization.
7. The fact that Clive Owen failed to have much chemistry with either Blanchett or Abbie Cornish, who played Bess Throckmorton, made the film's central love triangle fall flat flat flat. Although Blanchett and Cornish did have chemistry. Indeed, it totally read like Elizabeth and Bess were getting it on, and we all approved of this. Ralegh OTOH mostly sounded like he was talking about his cock a lot.
8. On which note, "MY BITCHES WEAR MY COLLAR" is possibly the best line ever spoken on film.
9. However, the fact that the love triangle took up much of the film was annoying because, when it was not being hilarious, it was actually sort of boring.
10. At one point Ralegh is made to say "I am not a courtier." How the hell is Sir Walter fucking Ralegh not a courtier? Seriously.
11. The stuff with the also-ev0l (mostly) English Catholics was sort of perfunctory and unsatisfying, too, and the Mary Queen of Scots stuff wasn't much better, although Samantha Morton was actually okayish in the part given that she just sort of turned up every so often to write letters and remark that she was the real queen, bitches. Her accent was kind of unfortunate though.
12. The scene where Mary is executed was terrific, though (even if it didn't quite manage all the unpleasantness of the real one). The fact that there was no dialogue helped a lot.
13. There's a scene right before things start going boom where Ralegh is seen riding on this giant dragony-looking battering-ram/ship figurehead thingie and it's like, okay, phallic much?
14. The Tilbury speech in the film included almost nothing of the real one, which was deeply irritating. I came into this movie with ONE EXPECTATION and that was that we'd get to hear Cate Blanchett say "I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king," and the movie DID NOT MEET THAT EXPECTATION. Bah.
15. The storm that contributed substantially to the pwning of the Armada is juxtaposed with shots of Elizabeth walking out onto a cliff in a white nightie and no wig, sort of like she's Nuclear Galadriel from LotR. Clearly, the moral of the story is that Elizabeth is magical, and Sir Walter Ralegh's enormous penis saved the day.
...so, yeah. Not really much of a success on any level, except that it all looked very pretty, but it was rushed and just not really impressive. It suffered from a lot of the problems the first one did -- that any one of the major plot foci is interesting enough in its own right to be a whole movie -- only even more so, and if you know anything about what's supposed to be going on, it's really unsatisfying, and the stuff that gets into the movie never really manages to be compelling in its own right.
Oh, and on a minor mise-en-scene note, I was really amused that the angels painted on the wall behind Elizabeth's throne in some scenes are copied from the ones in the Wilton Diptych, but not as amused as I was when the Rainbow portrait showed up in the background.
On the wall in Walsingham's bedroom.
Really, this is not something I wanted to think much about.
1. We started giggling when the opening text crawl said that "holy war rages across Europe, and only England stands against Spain" -- there, now you've upset the brave little toasters Dutch Protestants, movie -- and never really managed to stop.
2. I was impressed by the way they managed to work variations on a theme of "bastard devil whorebitch" into every single line of dialogue spoken by Philip II. Who was completely if unintentionally hilarious.
3. The overwhelming impression given by the scenes set in Spain is that Spain is actually Mordor. (And, okay -- when you are an early modernist you get used to "Catholicism = Eeeeeeeeeevil" rhetoric, but this movie laid it on thickly and hamhandedly enough to actually make me kind of uncomfortable. I mean, it's one thing if you're Edmund Spenser, but these filmmakers are in no way Edmund Spenser.)
4. For all the things wrong with this movie, and there are many, Cate Blanchett is still hot.
5. But she couldn't save the movie from its dumb script, which sort of lurched along episodically in a rather rushed fashion without really making the events and the characterization cohere. It was sort of "okay, here are some ev0l Spaniards! And here's Elizabeth being badass! But now she's all weepy offstage because as the Virgin Queen she can't get laid! And now she's being all pissy and stupid about it!"
6. Which, okay, I get that the movie's doing this whole "Elizabeth was a badass but underneath it all she was anxious and lonely" thing, which is fine because, okay, she probably was, but I'm not sure that having her express this by behaving like an ill-tempered high school girl around Ralegh is really the best way of accomplishing that characterization.
7. The fact that Clive Owen failed to have much chemistry with either Blanchett or Abbie Cornish, who played Bess Throckmorton, made the film's central love triangle fall flat flat flat. Although Blanchett and Cornish did have chemistry. Indeed, it totally read like Elizabeth and Bess were getting it on, and we all approved of this. Ralegh OTOH mostly sounded like he was talking about his cock a lot.
8. On which note, "MY BITCHES WEAR MY COLLAR" is possibly the best line ever spoken on film.
9. However, the fact that the love triangle took up much of the film was annoying because, when it was not being hilarious, it was actually sort of boring.
10. At one point Ralegh is made to say "I am not a courtier." How the hell is Sir Walter fucking Ralegh not a courtier? Seriously.
11. The stuff with the also-ev0l (mostly) English Catholics was sort of perfunctory and unsatisfying, too, and the Mary Queen of Scots stuff wasn't much better, although Samantha Morton was actually okayish in the part given that she just sort of turned up every so often to write letters and remark that she was the real queen, bitches. Her accent was kind of unfortunate though.
12. The scene where Mary is executed was terrific, though (even if it didn't quite manage all the unpleasantness of the real one). The fact that there was no dialogue helped a lot.
13. There's a scene right before things start going boom where Ralegh is seen riding on this giant dragony-looking battering-ram/ship figurehead thingie and it's like, okay, phallic much?
14. The Tilbury speech in the film included almost nothing of the real one, which was deeply irritating. I came into this movie with ONE EXPECTATION and that was that we'd get to hear Cate Blanchett say "I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king," and the movie DID NOT MEET THAT EXPECTATION. Bah.
15. The storm that contributed substantially to the pwning of the Armada is juxtaposed with shots of Elizabeth walking out onto a cliff in a white nightie and no wig, sort of like she's Nuclear Galadriel from LotR. Clearly, the moral of the story is that Elizabeth is magical, and Sir Walter Ralegh's enormous penis saved the day.
...so, yeah. Not really much of a success on any level, except that it all looked very pretty, but it was rushed and just not really impressive. It suffered from a lot of the problems the first one did -- that any one of the major plot foci is interesting enough in its own right to be a whole movie -- only even more so, and if you know anything about what's supposed to be going on, it's really unsatisfying, and the stuff that gets into the movie never really manages to be compelling in its own right.
Oh, and on a minor mise-en-scene note, I was really amused that the angels painted on the wall behind Elizabeth's throne in some scenes are copied from the ones in the Wilton Diptych, but not as amused as I was when the Rainbow portrait showed up in the background.
On the wall in Walsingham's bedroom.
Really, this is not something I wanted to think much about.