Elizabeth: The Golden Age, the sequel to 1998's
Elizabeth and, astoundingly, made by mostly the same people, is a giant mess of sloppy editing, overbearing music, cringe-inducing melodrama, and gross historical inaccuracy, the last of these problems so egregious that the film's screenwriters are unquestionably guilty of high treason — the historical-disinformation-ala-
Braveheart kind of treason that is sure to leave audiences far dumber than they would be otherwise.
Historicity aside — Hollywood can't always be perfect, after all —
Braveheart aimed no higher than a relatively obscure bit of the past, at the very least capturing William Wallace's 14th century rebellion against English imperialism
'in spirit'.The same cannot be said of
The Golden Age, which (among other things) reduces
Philip II of Spain to an effete, maniacally-religious twat, portrays the long, rather indecisive Spanish Armada of 1588 as an all-night boat party held within throwing distance of the not-even-close cliffs of Beachy Head, and depicts the poet/explorer
Sir Walter Raleigh as if he stumbled off the set of
Pirates of the Caribbean and added cum-saviour-of-England to his CV.
Granted, a few plot devices here or there approach the level of historical accuracy one hopes to get from a big-budget period-piece: the infamous
Papist plot to assassinate Elizabeth and replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots is kept, for example, and Raleigh's contentious marriage to lady-in-waiting
Elizabeth Throgmorton becomes a central part of the film's narrative thrust. But they're either grossly simplified or happen at the wrong time — like, during or just before 1588, instead of after, way before, or not at all.
(For a movie with few pretensions against gruesome displays of torture, some well-known and dramatically colourful bits of history are inexplicably ignored. It took no less than three swings of the executioner's blade to separate Mary's head from her body, for example, and the second blow sliced open her subclavian artery, sending blood everywhere. All we get in
The Golden Age is one off-screen clang!)
These details wouldn't matter if the film's artistic license held any water. But the possibility of 'in spirit' film making — or good film making, even — seems to have been left on the editing room floor. Or in the second unit director's head. Or buried under a budget cut.
Indeed, aside from Cate Blanchett's performance,
The Golden Age is glorious in its incoherence.
But for all its foibles,
The Golden Age is still worth watching. First among reasons is Blanchett, who brings wit and intelligence to even the most deadened of lines. And there
are a
few scenes, mostly toward the end, that pack tremendous visual power (and even fewer, mostly toward the beginning, that convey a pang of emotion or two). But the main attraction here is all that blabbering and historical apostasy, which make for one bloody entertaining show, even if it's more
parade of horribles than, for lack of a better comparison,
Elizabeth.
Just don't say you weren't warned.
~
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