Movie Makers & the Great Elizabethan Tampering Scandal

Rating: 6/10 (20 May 2011)

What is a really good film could have been a masterpiece if it wasn't for the poetic licence used by the makers of this movie.
Why on earth a movie studio wants to tamper with historical facts when the real story is perfectly fine and intriguing in its own right is beyond me. Take the assassination of Mary of Guise – there is no evidence that she was assassinated by Francis Walsingham.
In fact by most accounts she died of natural causes. Walsingham was not an assassin or a murderer. He was the Queen's Protector or 'Spymaster' as he was known. In essence, the Elizabethan version of MI5. There is no account either of a 'poisoned dress' –security at court was very tight in such times and guards were constantly on the lookout for potential threats.
The fact is that the story of Elizabeth I is so compelling without this embroidery – none of this salad dressing is really necessary. One of the best abuses of artistic licence is in the film U-571 – the Americans never captured an Enigma coding machine and yet the British captured two. What's the point in making the film then?
The fact is that movie studios produce films for entertainment and think that historical works need to be embellished to make them more watchable. Yet this is nonsense – in Elizabeth's case the history is fascinating and with great actors such as Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush, Christopher Ecclestone and Sir Richard Attenborough, a true and accurate film about Elizabeth's reign would have been quite enough.
Having said this, if you can ignore the multitude of historical inaccuracies and take the film on its own merits, the movie is well produced with great acting performances. Cate Blanchett is fabulous as Elizabeth and Joseph Fiennes is equally good as Dudley. Geoffrey Rush's portrayal as Francis Walsingham, however, is the stand out performance for me.
The film is actually a doomed love story surrounding the friendship between Dudley and the Queen. This is quite true - in fact, the King of Spain was even quoted as saying that 'Elizabeth would never marry or will marry Robert Dudley because she loves him'. An interesting fact – Dudley played host to the Queen at Kenilworth Castle where, as part of the pomp, fireworks were used for the very first time in England.
So to sum up, Elizabeth is a great film but chunks of it are not true. The sad part is that people watch films like this and believe everything they see. If historical inaccuracies bug you then this one may not be for you.
Wake up movie makers - the truth is so much better than fiction.