Cate Blanchett stars as the Queen in Elizabeth: The Golden Age. (Universal Pictures)
Some advice for parents of little girls with princess fixations: a double bill of The Queen and Elizabeth: The Golden Age should snuff that sparkly pink fantasy. Princesses become queens, and being queen, at least according to the movies these days, sucks. Not entirely, of course — there are Spanish Armadas to thwart and goofy international suitors to mock — but mostly it’s paperwork, paperwork, paperwork. Plus, a queen’s life is so public that she makes Britney Spears seem like an ascetic tucked away in a cave, meditating.
This modern, tormented queen is a filmmaker’s invention, designed more to please a contemporary audience — we like our cracks in authority — than a library of historians, but that’s okay. Elizabeth: The Golden Age is drama, not documentary, and it’s a winking, playful costume piece, if not exactly a meticulous study. Further quibbles: Returning director Shekhar Kapur doesn’t have the exquisite visual sense — or budget? — that makes the most luxuriant histori-porn such a turn-on, and the kitsch index is high. (Elizabeth goes a little Mommie Dearest on one of her ladies-in-waiting.) But at the film’s centre roils a sea of sincere emotion. I gave in, and was rewarded with a wash of gilded escapism.
The Golden Age is a sequel to 1998’s Elizabeth, which focused on the early days of the Virgin Queen’s rocky anointment. At the time, Cate Blanchett was a relative newcomer, and since then she, too, has been anointed, as one of cinema’s most formidable performers. It’s fascinating to watch her evolution from film to film, and wonder where Blanchett’s new wisdom ends and the Queen’s begins. Blanchett’s voice is deeper, rounder; her gaze uncompromising. Of course, by the year 1587, Elizabeth was in her mid-50s; on screen, she looks about Blanchett’s age, a well-buffed 30-something. This makes the Queen’s lament over the “lines” on her face a little less powerful, but Blanchett is such a good actress that she turns the mirror-gazing into something deeper: a moment of personal vanity coupled with an existential quest. Is the queen a mortal human being, or is she a divine leader? Helen Mirren was still wondering half a millenium later.
The threats to Elizabeth’s reign are many: Catholic Mary Stuart (Samantha Morton), Queen of Scots, is locked up but plotting with the Spanish to overthrow Elizabeth, the Protestant Queen. Broken-record style, Spanish King Philip II (Jordi Molla) schemes and spits some combination of the three words “Protestant,” “heretic,” and “bastard!” He sounds like a lisping Dr. Evil, rubbing his hands together so frequently they must be raw. But less campily, there’s a modern allegory at play, too, with signposts like Holy War, rising religious fundamentalism, martyrs and beheadings pointing toward the present.
While Elizabeth the Queen and her trusted advisor, Walsingham (Geoffrey Rush), are navigating against her conspirators, Elizabeth the person is navigating an epic romantic life. Suitors seeking alliances are plentiful, but it’s the unwashed, unblinking visage of Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen) that catches her eye. As he stands at her feet and regales her with stories of the New World, the Queen gets all hot and bothered beneath her whalebone. However unconsciously, Elizabeth brokers a relationship between Bess, a pretty blonde lady-in-waiting (Abbie Cornish), and Raleigh. Bess becomes Elizabeth’s surrogate for a life the Queen cannot lead. The triangle that emerges between these three — who’s serving whom? — is beautifully constructed, and fragile.
Fittingly, it is Blanchett who rules the film. The generally excellent Owen seems oddly off his game; really, he needs to blink more. His eyeballs are probably dry and itchy, and no one wants to think about that. Blanchett goes big, but she controls the character, flicking at parody, then backing off. This is a queen who throws a hissy fit when she doesn’t get what she wants, weeps over an execution and searches for her own identity, all the while ruling an empire with an iron fist. Yes, there may be a whiff of sexism in the transformation of a legendary ruler into a chick-flick heroine. But there’s enough political richness elsewhere to honour Elizabeth’s place in history, and Blanchett is wonderfully unyielding as a woman whose greatest affair is, in the end, with her country. “Let them come with the armies of Hell,” she roars to a wall of her soldiers before a fierce battle. “They will not pass!” They wouldn’t dare.
Elizabeth: The Golden Age opens Oct. 12 across Canada.Katrina Onstad writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.
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