ELIZABETH

INTRODUCTION: Already laden with awards having made it into AP Online and the National Board Of Review's top ten films of '98, secured the National Board Of Review Best Director award for Kapur and the Broadcast Critics Best Actress Award for Blanchett, Elizabeth is nominated for three Golden Globes, Dramatic Picture, Actress In Dramatic Picture (Blanchett) and Director (Kapur) and Oscar possibilities loom.

SYNOPSIS: England 1554, Catholic Queen Mary (Burke), the original Bloody Mary, sits on the throne and earns her epithet through the brutal purging of England's Protestant heretics. Her half sister Elizabeth (Blanchett) frolics with her young lover Robert Dudley (Fiennes), blissfully unaware of the responsibility that will be thrust upon her by the Mary's impending death.

Thrust into a world of conspiracy, with the French and Scottish massing on the border, the treasury bare, and the country torn apart by religious differences, the only apparent escape is for her to marry either the King of Spain or French Alverade de Quadra (James Frain) but her love is for Robert.

REVIEW: A bloody tale of conspiracy and revenge, where the young innocent is corrupted by the ascent to power. The film is more akin, both stylistically and thematically, to "The Godfather" than it is to the traditional frock flick. "Elizabeth" suffers many of the same flaws as "The Godfather", overlong, with a slow and drawn out introduction and a rushed denouement, a plethora of poorly sketched characters and a conspiracy that is far to twisted to be understood.

Where the film does win out however, like Liz herself, is with shear guts and determination. Kapur has a long list of movie credentials but it wasn't until the Channel 4 funded "The Bandit Queen" that he made his breakthrough on the international stage. Despite Elizabeth being his English language debut, he is not afraid to innovate and experiment with the film. The bizarre angles and shots being matched only by an even more bizarre casting.

Australian Blanchett ("Oscar and Lucinda") was a surprise choice for the lead, but she does indeed bear an uncanny resemblance to a young Glenda Jackson, although judging by contemporary portraits Dennis  Waterman might have been a better physical match for the balding, toothless, Virgin Queen. As for Blanchett as Lizard say "She can act too" which is probably an advantage in her chosen career. Indeed the On-Line Film Critics Society, to which Lizard and I are affiliated, recently added to her burgeoning awards with their Best Actress award, although personally I didn't vote for her. As impressed as I was by her impassioned performance I was unable to connect to it on an emotional level.

Blanchett is backed up by an ensemble of varying ability. Wraith's brother Joseph put in the same charmingly bland performance as the Virgin Queen's love interest Robert, as he did as Martha's love interest Lawrence in his last movie. Eccleston puts in a brilliantly menacing if at time pantomimic turn as Norfolk, the villain of the piece. Geoffrey Rush, another Antipodean, features as Walsingham. You may remember Rush from the line up of previous acting Oscar winners at the '98 ceremony. If you cast your mind even further back you may remember that he won his award for "Shine" to a cacophony of criticism from cynics who claimed that he got the award for the character he played rather than for his thespian ability, and that he would be quickly forgotten. I think time has proved who was correct there and I am certain that his commanding performance in this film will do little to change that.

The rest of the cast list is filled out with a plethora of distractingly familiar faces from John Gielguid all the way up to Eric Cantona via the likes of Angus Deayton, Wayne Sleep, Kelly MacDonald, Dickie Attenborough and the normally excellent Kathy Burke who seems uncertain what to do with the part of Queen Mary.

Even more distracting than the cast is Kapur's flashy cinematography. Whilst certainly getting the most out of John Myre's sumptuous production design, the bizarre angles and shots through curtains, windows, etc, etc, draw attention away from the character play, although in Deayton's case this is probably just as well.

Michael Hirst's script brilliantly overlays modern concerns over the legend of the Virgin Queen, showing us a strong female figure sacrificing her humanity to unite her country. The decision to concentrate on the early days of Elizabeth's reign leaves the Golden age of the Elizabethan period to be covered in a few perfunctory captions at the end, a sequel would certainly be decidedly more interesting than the actual Elizabeth II.

An exceedingly rare chance to get to know Liz, before she became a Virgin.

Mutt's Rating: ***

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