the head that wears the crown

Rating: 7/10 (20 May 2005)

Elizabeth is, as the name promises, the story of the Queen Elizabeth, but with one difference - it is the psychological story of Elizabeth. I saw this movie for a piece of history, and as anyone who has even a passing acquaintance with the era would be, I was curious about one of the primary forces behind it. Well, I got something else. I got a little psychological tale set inside the head of a major political figure.
The film can possibly be analysed and revealed to have several layers and sub-texts, but I found it to be essentially the story of a woman coming to terms with being Queen. A tad obvious as analyses go, I know, but really that's what this movie is. And it is terrific just for that.
Cate Blanchett romps through this film. She seems to go under the skin of the character and come out on the other side, as she oscillates from vulnerable maiden to monarch, from soft beauty to ice maiden, from girl to monarch, from uncertain to ruthless. It's pretty much a blast watching her as she slowly but steadily comes to terms with the nasty little job she has inherited.
And no, it's not that she is in any way uncertain about wanting the job. That's what I loved about the movie - Elizabeth clearly loves her job, she wants it, and is never coy about that. But she must pay the required price and she does in terms of the life she eventually has to live. She inherits her power but eventually also earns it. She probably succeeded as a Queen because she was a real pro about it.
Shekhar Kapur does a good job - his style is a sort of invisible one. He is almost not there, he seems to have put it all together and then nimbly jumped off the set. Half his work is done in his casting decisions as it should be in a 'dramatic' film - the biggest one of all being Blanchett. What's more he doesn't seem loathe to add a little extra drama to the film, and that really works. The acting, the camera work and the staging of the movie have just a bit of an excessive quality about, but it never goes wrong a) because, this is after all a story about royalty, about powerful people taking decisions that affect entire nations, and these are after all very grave matters and b) because of the stellar cast involved.
-----Possible spoilers ahead---- The settings and costumes also help, of course, and the camera work seems to have a fly on the wall quality about it as it wanders through the somehow forbidden private world of England's royalty. But this film is finally about the performances. Geoffrey Rush is subtle, classy and slimy all at the same time. Joseph Fiennes is the nice lover to the point where you start hating him for his 'niceness', and his character is always an echo of what Elizabeth feels for him at that particular point in time, and an echo too, of the love she must give up to be strong enough to rule. Richard Attenborough I loved in the scene when the power game comes full circle. Norfolk is all huff and yes a little dramatic but he's a great foil to Elizabeth herself and one somehow tends to see his point of view at times, which is a terrific thing. And not one of the supporting cast is wasted - every face is brilliantly lit, and intensely shot. And Cate Blanchett is a goddess and the film simply belongs to her.
Initially two things rankled. One was the lack of English scenery - what did the people of England at the time do, how did they live, what was life like in England at that time? But Elizabeth is a psychological drama, it is about power and about the rarified atmosphere that monarchs, kings and even modern day rulers must live in. In that sense the director's choice to rarify the world of this movie makes complete sense, as does the quick pacing - something you'd expect more from a thriller than a historical.
The other was the fact that Elizabeth seems to depend a lot on the help of Walsingham in her success. I debated this for a while thinking 'Doesn't it undermine her as a woman?' and came to the conclusion that it doesn't. My rationale was this: If Elizabeth was a man, we would never have, in any way, seen her need for help as a sign of weakness, after all no seat of power (even in a small office with a hundred people I assure you) is won and retained without genuine support from the middle ranks. The only possible reason we could see Elizabeth as weak is perhaps because of our own conditioning making us believe that if a woman needs help, it must be 'because she is a woman'. Hell, everyone needs help, and I have a strong feeling anyway that by the time Elizabeth got good at being Queen, she needed absolutely no help from anyone. By then she was a great Queen and a brilliant pro, and not a conflicted soul (as the film admittedly 'hypothesises') in fact she was probably so good a queen, she was probably boring as a 'character'.