Official propaganda movie

Rating: 5/10 (21 July 2009)

"Elizabeth" reserves its longest, most tedious and elaborately produced scene for the Coronation, which betrays the picture as thinly-veiled official propaganda. The history it deploys belongs in the fascistic Arthur Bryant schoolboy textbooks of the early 20th century. What was really happening during her reign was less the internecine plotting over the succession than the birth of brutal capitalism, corporate plunder and enslavement, all with royal court's approval. Elizabeth was the bastard daughter of Henry VIII, who saw her innocent mother beheaded before her eyes on the orders of her deranged father. The "virgin queen" promotion that has endured for four and a half centuries, probably stems from Elizabeth Tudor-Boleyn inheriting syphilis from her mad father and infected mother, and refusing male relations because of the fear of infecting her own child. You may be sure such a story would never come out, particularly after such a long reign enabled its complete suppression. On the other hand, the Queen's letters record the incredibly detailed care she took over her own and other aristocrats' courts and retainers. Well educated, she seems to have been a person of outstanding qualities trapped in a historic maelstrom. This puerile film only scratches the surface of what was going on in our UK past and is little more than a chocolate box version of history.