Elizabeth: The Middle Years

Ok I admit it. The film opened on Friday and I bought tickets online on Wednesday to make sure that I got to see it opening night. And so off we went to Chelsea to enjoy in a room full of gay men, the art of righteously reigning. Many a wish fulfillment was in the air in the cinema, performing a pas de deux with the wafting designer cologne.

I know that the film is called "The Golden Years" but as a 47-year old I have earned the right to call it "The Middle Years." Elizabeth ages, and becomes both herself and the Queen, at once. She settles into her role and melds with it in glorious acceptance of her fate and duty.

But ah the outfits she gets to wear, by "she" I now mean a corseted Cate Blanchett.

The film is operatic, not in the sense that there are arias and recitatives, rather that there are garments and appearances that stop the action as the camera moves ecstatically around the Queen, celebrating her form, her wigs, her ability to be expressive within such constraining clothes. One forgets about the story--who cares that Spain is about to invade--Cate looks marvelous, translucent, fiery. She is in orange, emerald green, royal blue, in metalics (when she is on horse--but not sitting side saddle--to motivate the troops), and then perhaps most spectacularly in flowing white atop a large map of England and Europe. She is purety versus the tainted Spaniards. The England that this Elizabeth lives in has endless light and Spain somehow dark.

The movie sacrifices story to present tableaus of striking beauty, and quite frankly I couldn't have been more pleased.

Cate Blanchett did wonderful things with her voice--she has an amazing tonal range--her chirping soprano can get go quite deep like a contralto, and she can change volume unexpectedly. In this film, the queen ruled through her ensembles and her voice--to provoke her ire was a deafening experience for all near her.

Clive Owen (I hesitate to remark upon his good looks, suffice to say that he looked as if testosterone was issuing forth from every single pore) channelled Errol Flynn in a pirate movie and they were singularly gorgeous shots of him swimming beneath burning vessels with the camera looking up at a swimming horse that had jumped from a Spanish ship. It was impossible not to root for the success of such a roguish, if self-seeking player. Thanks for bringing us tobacco by the way Sir Walter Raleigh. This we needed? I would have been happy with potatoes.

Samantha Morton who might be one of my favorite actresses was a devious, imperious, and proud Mary Queen of Scots. The way in which she faced her beheading with a rebellious posture was a feat of performance that alone was worth the price of admission.

But in the end of course, it is Elizabeth and Cate's movie. This was a contemporary Elizabeth and director Shekhar Kapur couldn't help but to remythologize her. In the film, she is religiously tolerant and refuses to persecute English catholics; after all this thorougly modern millie believes in the rule of law, not in Machiavellian tactics. When Raleigh brings in native Americans to show that he has conquered land in the new world and called it Virginia in the Queen's honor, he states that they are eager to accept her as their Queen, Elizabeth retorts in almost pc fashion, "Don't they have a leader of their own" as if to say she is not eager to indulge in an imperialist adventure unlike the (bad) Spanish and their nasty, cruel inquisition. I suppose that Kapur (himself born into an English-dominated South Asia) is trying to say that England (unlike Spain and Portugal with their empire building) was an oasis of enlightenment in this period of its history before its expansionist tendencies took over.

But perhaps I read too much into all this--this Elizabeth is mythic not actual and as played by Cate the Queen is entirely in control of her myth. She doesn't wait for her closeup--instead she waits for the sweeping long shots that show her surrounded by her court, off on her own slightly, sending out more light than is humanly possible. One wonders if she has supernatural powers to control the wind.