Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age [Media Notes 55]

I found these to be strange films. Elizabeth (1998) is set in the late 1550s, and the time of Elizabeth’s rise to the throne and Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) is set roughly 30 years later, at the time of the Spanish Armada (and, incidentally, just before Shakespeare takes a place on the London stage). Cate Blanchett plays Elizabeth in both films and Geoffrey Rush plays Francis Walsingham, her adviser.

Both films:

• were directed by Shekhar Kapur,
• both teem with religious intrigue (Catholic vs. Protestant of course),
• have been accused of anti-Catholic bias,
• have Elizabeth avoiding suitors,
• have won academic awards,
• feature notable costumes,
• favor, among other things, shots from high up in Gothic Cathedrals looking down on people below,
• have ‘screechy’ choral passages on the soundtrack that give the films an aura of dark mystery,
• have a beheading, while Elizabeth seemed stronger on torture and The Golden Age seemed stronger on battle,
• are festooned with historical inaccuracies...

I could go on and on. But that’s enough. They were directed by the same man and not unsurprisingly, look, sound, and feel alike.

I know of the historical inaccuracies only because Wikipedia detailed them. Otherwise, I know so little of Elizabethan history to have picked up on them myself. The inaccuracies don’t particularly bother me, but the poetic license needs to be in service of a potent artistic vision. Kapur’s vision is certainly potent, but, for what it’s worth, not particularly to my taste.

The seem, well, oddly religious. We’re not being feed any religious doctrine that I can tell, but they have a ritual aura about them – the darkness, the black and red costuming, those vaulted ceiling. The films are realized in a space somewhere between liturgy, gladiatorial spectacle, and naturalistic drama.

Very strange.