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‘Elizabeth: The Golden Age’ review preview
Amend the epitaphs — Gloriana, the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth Regina — with St. Elizabeth of the Armada.
The sequel “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” — an undisguised platform for Cate Blanchett’s scenery chomping, and why not? — hews neatly to the previous 50 or so movies about the triumphant Elizabeth I (themselves, variations on poems, novels, plays and operas). To the standard themes, however, add another: The beatification of English Protestant standard-bearer Elizabeth as a sort of glowing, waxen totem from the Mediterranean Catholic tradition.
Follow the drama in five acts.
1. Elizabeth in Love: Among the unmarried queen’s suitors and purported lovers, Sir Walter Raleigh figures in only a few dramatizations. And, as far back as Vivien Leigh’s 1938 “Fire over England,” a fetching lady in waiting has served as romantic competitor for Queen Bess; this time, it’s calf-eyed Abbie Cornish. As Raleigh, however, Clive Owen generates sparks with neither mistress, his motionless man mountain falling flat against an emotionally fluent Blanchett.
2. Elizabeth vs. Mary: Playwrights and screenwriters can’t resist a showdown between handsome, headstrong Catholic Mary Queen of Scots and her bonier, strategic-minded Protestant rival. Here, at least, they don’t meet face to face. Blanchett’s Elizabeth pretty much ignores her scheming, imprisoned relative until Mary’s beheading looms, so to speak, over both their heads. Bulbous-featured Samantha Morton plays Mary with an erect dignity and a Scottish brogue (odd, since Mary was raised in France), and handles her climactic arrest with the fury of a cornered animal.
3. Elizabeth vs. Elizabeth: This is often the most telling conflict from the Elizabeth legend. Was she a confident leader, winning domestic and foreign hearts with her wisdom and courage, or a love-lorn woman riddled with doubts about her attractiveness and legitimacy? Not surprisingly, Blanchett is willing to polish up any facet of the queen’s personality, sounding and even looking a bit like regal predecessor Glenda Jackson in certain scenes. (That said, it’s hard to take Blanchett’s insecurity about her looks. Even uglied up, bone structure will out.)
4. Elizabeth at War: Movies have always excelled at battle action, and CGI can make war epic, if not always specific or human. We feel relief when the Spanish Armada finally sets sail, giving us sun-streaked skies, billowing sails and all the familiar romance of the sea. Unfortunately, the battles are muddled, historically and visually, mixing storms, fire ships and cliff-side preparations into a confusing brew. And does anyone buy Raleigh navigating the crucial fire ship into the Spanish fleet, diving from the flames at the last minute?
5. St. Elizabeth: The symbol of a powerful virgin queen has survived since pagan times. (Recall another Virgin elevated to reining status.) In this movie, the religious allusions pile up like prayers for loved ones in Purgatory. Without plausible explanation, almost every scene is shot on a Gothic church set, which stands in for palace, castle, where ever. Elizabeth is often illuminated with beatific beams and she watches over the Channel naval battle like a deus ex machina atop the cliffs of Dover.
In the strangest interlude, the camera swoops around the triumphant Elizabeth as she stands alone, open-armed, glassy-eyed in creamy light, exactly like certain Catholic representations of virginal saints.
Historical dramas rise and fall on their plausible dialogue, and screenwriters William Nicholson and Michael Hirst treat the exposition with brisk assuredness, but then loose control over the stagey declarations — “I have a hurricane in me that will strip Spain bare if you dare to try me” — as the movie progresses. Despite the ongoing mess, director Shekhar Kapur elevates the camera and the tone whenever possible, even if the music is often more portentous than the actual dramas that follow.
A movie made in heaven? Emphatically not. A campy romp with cinema’s favorite queen? Bless me.
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