WHAT HAPPENED?: Elizabeth- The Golden Age

Ten years ago an excellent historical drama helmed by an Indian director and starring an up and coming Australian actress crashed onto the scene and wowed the portion of the population that engages in thought. It was interesting, well acted and beautiful to look at. Elizabeth (1998) kick started Cate Blanchett's film career. I will die feeling that she was robbed at the Oscars by Gwyneth Paltrow, but nobody actually votes based solely on performance. Shekhar Kapur captured the humanity of a monarch whom to this day is considered one of the greatest and most interesting rulers in recorded history.

So...What in hell happened?




















Sequels of any kind are tricky. The general rule of thumb is that film number two is supposed to be grander and more epic. Thing is, grande has a tendency to slip into ridiculous really really quickly. If Elizabeth: The Golden Age were directed by someone else, I could put my mind at ease in thinking "Well what do you expect, it's a different director." But no, it's the SAME guy, but in name only. Whatever nuance Kapur exhibited in Elizabeth, it was a one time thing.

I chose to ignore word of bad reviews, as I had been anticipating this film from its inception. Clive Owen as Sir Walter Raleigh excited me, and Samantha Morton as Mary Queen of Scots seemed an intelligent casting choice. And of course, the return of Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush was key. The cast in Golden Age is top notch, no question...at all. No complaints. Why should anyone have been concerned? There was the slight matter that Kapur had only directed one other film since the first Elizabeth, The Four Feathers (2002), which bombed disasterously and frankly destroyed all three of its stars careers: Wes Bentley- where are you?, Kate Hudson- has only been in comedies since, Heath Ledger- JUST made a comeback with Brokeback Mountain. Previous to Elizabeth, Kapur did a number of Bollywood films, but NOTHING after Elizabeth aside from the one bomb. Where is the growth? The exercise in skill? Nowhere. Clearly, the man was scrambling after Feathers tanked and figured he'd limp back to his one Hollywood glory. Good move, I say. Who wouldn't be behind that? I imagine he had no trouble convincing Blanchett and Rush to do the film again, and those are two actors who would draw other good actors. The money follows. Oh how the money clearly followed. Too much money.

Immediately the film is ridiculous, but you ignore it. We are informed of the state of Elizabeth's reign. The music is epic in a silly and boring way and it remains so throughout the ENTIRE film. One of my biggest pet peeves about music in film is when a score is played continuously during every scene without any merit or enhancement of the film. If music detracts from plot, you're an idiot. Not to mention that at times the music devolved from boring classical to almost new age Yanni. WHAT!??

The performances are fine considering the dialogue is...say it with me, ridiculous. Again, it's not immediately obvious. The screenwriters remember for a bit that Elizabeth was renowned for her wit, but the wit falls away into over dramatic statements and her charm is LOST. I couldn't help but compare this film as I watched it to the recent HBO miniseries Elizabeth I. That miniseries OWNED. The humanity they brought to the Queen was engaging, the dialogue incredibly witty and even fun. That miniseries did EVERYTHING right to this film's blistering wrongs. Clive Owen makes everything sound delicious, and it's a testament to his skill that he was able to say much of the dialogue with a straight face. Blanchett as well gets out some zingers. I love how deep her voice can get, and the theatre actress side of her comes out when she projects in anger, but the lines are so clearly proud of themselves that the emotion she musters is canceled out.

I don't know anything about King Philip of Spain, but in this film he comes off as a B-movie villain. He has this weird cripple shuffle and a little daughter who never speaks and carries around a porcelain Elizabeth doll. The characterization is baffling, and it's silliness is rivaled only by the one dimensional sinister portrayal of the Jesuit assassin orchestrating the assassination attempt on the Queen with Mary's help. If your goal is to present a Queen as a human being, you need to humanize EVERYONE around her as well. Kapur clearly took this for granted, as he did it so well in the first film, and allowed the entire cast to devolve into caricatures. While I prefer excellent scripts, I believe that a film can rise above it's horrid script through good direction. It just seems that NO ONE involved in making this film was anywhere near the top of their game.

There is so much to complain about, it's hard to keep track. The costumes. At first glance Elizabeth's gowns are amazing, but quickly detract from any sense of seriousness the film is desperately trying to hold on to. Don't get me wrong, the costume designer is clearly talented, but Elizabeth's many gowns and wigs would have been more at home in a runway show in an Elizabethan theme. Going back to the HBO miniseries, the costumes and wigs were painstakingly researched, and the realness pays off. Some of Blanchett's garb seemed more suited to a drag show, they were just that overemphasized. Her wig and armor outfit before the naval battle with Spain is just plain sad. Why would Queen Elizabeth I have a wig resembling mermaid hair?

Ultimately, Elizabeth doesn't seem human at all. There are so many shots of her in full make-up that make her look angelic in a marble statue way and Kapur has her stand still as he pans around her. There's no humanity left to cling to, she's not one of us and never was it seems. It's upsetting to me that that's the ultimate impression because she is SO human and fragile yet powerful in the first film. I am really at a loss as to why so much of the integrity of the first film was lost.The human being (1998)


Ridiculous (2007)

Before I abandon this film for dead I must share the one redeeming moment. This film is bad as bad can be, but ironically contains one of the greatest moments in acting I have ever seen. I know that sounds crazy after all that, but it's true. In a scene that doesn't even last two minutes, Samantha Morton unleashes a frenzy of emotion that exhibits a level of humanness that is absent anywhere else in the film. It is the moment when Mary Queen of Scots is informed that her plot against Elizabeth is discovered and that she is being arrested for treason. The depth and utterly interesting range of her reaction is impossible to put into words. It's so good and lacking in any cliches, that I want her to win an Oscar just so her glimpse of brilliance won't be forever buried under the pile of mess it got stuck in. The treatment of Mary's execution in the film is pathetic. Again, HBO nailed it by addressing the brutality and embarrassment of the execution gone wrong as well as fully expressing Elizabeth's horror at not only having to sanction the death of another Queen and her cousin, but having to sanction the death of a woman in the same fashion as her father killed her mother. Golden Age doesn't even MENTION that it took TWO strokes to kill Mary and that when the executioner picked up her head it fell out of its wig and rolled down the steps.

My advice, not that at this point anyone needs it, is to watch the HBO miniseries, and when this load pops up on DVD check out every scene with Samantha Morton. Better yet, illegally download it just for the one scene and then remember it as a short film and move on with your life. I was ragingly pissed after viewing this film, but my faith was restored by viewing the antithesis of it- The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. I'll get to that later.