Elizabeth: The Golden Age

I was intending to see Lions for Lambs this weekend, however in a marked departure from form, I read a few reviews beforehand. It has been universally panned by critics and movie goers alike, which put me right off. Normally I judge a film on its own merits, neither reading reviews or letting friends dissuade me, but the sheer number of bad reviews put me right off.
I await with anticipation the first review of this in the teamroom.

A little historic fact, a little poetic licence, a shedload of bloody good costume drama and you've got yourself a damn good historical biopic.

How good is it? Well put it this way, I don't normally enjoy period drama or historical biopic films, yet this film captivated me in a way that quite a few recent "blockbusters" have failed to do.

The story you can get from the trailer: Philip of Spain, leader of a Catholic country hates the English for being a Protestant country. This fact is not helped by a pope calling for holy war and calling the Protestants devil worshippers. However, the film shows a lot of the political aspects and verges into thriller territory at times. Whether the inferences are true or not are debatable, but it makes for a good story none the less. Samantha Morton plays Mary, Queen of Scots rather well, although the accent does sound a little forced.

There are also parallels drawn between Elizabeth I and our current monarch, for example; you never see either of them wearing the same dress twice. However, joking aside, there is a subtext that a person should be judged on their actions, not their faith, which was done with such subtlety that I barely noticed it. A pleasant change from the usual Hollywood message that's rammed down your neck, packed with gun powder, fused and then lit.

However the film does not shy away from awkward historical fact. It would be nice to think that our naval genius outwitted the Spanish armada, however the evidence all points to their grandiosity and over-engineering being their undoing. The Spanish ships were just so large that when a storm hit them, they could not manoeuvre. The English fleet took advantage, sent in fire ships and decimated the armada.

Personally I don't know why they didn't call it Elizabeth 2, because until it was pointed out to me that this is a sequel, I honestly didn't know. The argument that this would have confused Americans is touted as a kind of a joke, but that doesn't really hold water as, in my experience, confusing the average American is about as difficult as crossing the street and can be accomplished with such questions as "What is the capital of England?"* or sometimes even "Who is the president of the United States?" However it's nice that there's a reference to Raleigh's wish to establish a colony in the newly discovered America as a kindly reminder to our American cousins of their own country's origins.

OQ: Elizabeth is darkness, and I am the light.

Score: B Damn good film, highly enjoyable. Yes, some historical bunkum, but overall this is forgivable. *The answer is of course "E".