European Films

Shekhar Kapur creates the cinematic equivalent of a bombastically baroque and labyrinthine cathedral befitting a Virgin Queen with Elizabeth: The Golden Age. His sequel to the breakout arthouse hit Elizabeth is less arthouse and more historical spectacle, even offering pirates and sea battles as well as the expected political intrigue and court backstabbing, while Cate Blanchett reprises the role that earned her her first Oscar nomination and made her famous. The film treats history as an excuse for a rollicking good time at the movies and on those terms it largely succeeds, even if it will make history buffs cringe. Whether this lavishly produced spectacle, still a sequel to an arthouse hit, can do epic business remains to be seen. After its recent European premiere at the Rome Film Festival, the film will be released in the UK on November 2.

 

The film opens with a montage of stained glass windows that offer a quick sketch of the European political situation in 1585, when the Protestant Elizabeth was in her fifties (though Blanchett looks to be in her thirties) and Catholic Europe, led by Philip of Spain (Jordi Mollà), hoped to overthrow and replace her with a Catholic Queen such as Mary Queen of Scots (Samantha Morton, from Control), who also happens to be Elizabeth’s cousin.

 

The film’s opening with this religious imagery borrowed from cathedral architecture is significant, since the film itself is a cathedral of sorts in which the Virgin Queen is venerated as someone who might have had some human traits but who was nevertheless divine. The film’s opulence in production and costume design, its swooping camerawork and look-at-me-aren’t-I-pretty moments all seem designed to inspire awe and adulation (and actually manage to do so quite a few times) and many individual nooks and crannies offer intricate artworks of rich imagination and great joy. But like many prestigious building projects made by many hands over the course of many years, it is also badly planned, with some parts obscuring others and a sore lack of a grander scheme of overall coherence.

 

The screenplay for Elizabeth: The Golden Age was written by Elizabeth screenwriter Michael Hirst, who collaborated for this sequel with William Nicholson, one of the co-writers on Ridley Scott’s Roman epic Gladiator. The first part of the film remains quite close to the tone of the first film, with minor conspiracies, long talks with her advisor Sir Francis Walsingham (again played byGeoffrey Rush) and some conversations with her fair lady in waiting Bess (Abbie Cornish). Nicholson was probably more involved in the elaborate second half of the film, in which Elizabeth’s armies have to face the Spanish Armada with the help of the dashing pirate Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen), which leads to amorous feelings towards Raleigh from at least two women, rousing speeches in front of the troops and an epic sea battle.

 

Even if some of the dialogue in the film sounds more like a mixture of post-feminist, post-new Age gibberish rather than Elizabethan English, Blanchett is simply stunning, using her consistently regal poise to overcome any misgivings one might have about what she is saying. The rest of the cast is also excellent, though Mollà, Cornish, Morton and Rush are given relatively little to do (it is a good thing that Rush’s character is kept away from the sea battle, or it would have brought back memories of his Captain Barbossa). David Threlfall makes a fun cameo appearance as an astrologer.

 

Though technically a UK production, it is noteworthy how much Australian talent has worked on the film, including Blanchett, Rush, Cornish and editor Jill Bilcock, who also edited the first Elizabeth and Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! The combination of her work and the pounding, relentless bombast of the score by Craig Armstrong, another Moulin Rouge! alumnus, actually make Kapur’s film seem an Elizabethan-era version of the madcap energy, hopeless romanticism, penny-novel intrigue and intentional historical inaccuracies of Baz Luhrman’s film. The only thing that is missing are the musical numbers.

 

 

Browse for DVDs, soundtracks, books and more: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.fr, amazon.de, dvdGO.es, internetbookshop.it, nl.bol.com, allposters.com.