Great acting by Blanchett, but historical hogwash ...

Rating: 5/10 (6 January 2004)

Saw this film for the second time the other night. There's some great acting by Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush, Jo Fiennes and Christopher Eccleston. The atmosphere is terrific & it's been well edited to produce something taut and compelling.
Unfortunately, however, it is absolute historical hogwash. Does this matter? Well, of course we are all involved in interpretation, and there is no such thing as a pure fact, least of all in history. But to ride quite so roughshod over events in a film that purports to portray history is poor. There is interpretation ... and then there is complete alteration, and I'm afraid this film is the latter. Rather than shed light on 'truth' by giving a different angle it simply bastardizes what really happened. This is a far cry from films such as Shakespeare in Love or The English Patient, which creatively tell something important by setting them in a familiar landscape. This is distortion.