The building of a Queen

Rating: 7/10 (2 January 2012)

A historic fiction work (a novel, a play or a film) doesn't need to respect historic true in every detail to be of great value. Some narrative freedom may be allowed in order to promote aesthetic values or beauty providing the true essence of historic facts is not altered. This movie abides entirely by these rules and gives us a story of what in its essence might have been the ascent of Queen Elizabeth I of England to the throne and the intrigues, enmities and hardships she had to fight in that ascent and on the first days of her reign to impose herself in the end as the Queen who made England the first power of the time. Cate Blanchett does a reasonable and rather acceptable role as the Queen, passing from a somewhat childish behaviour in the beginning (very understandable allowing for her youth) to a progressively more serious and stern one as far as she went on imposing herself to friends and foes. The images and scenes show adequately an accurate and even beautiful reconstitution of that historic epoch. However I think that some scenes and dialogues are too "modern" for the epoch in terms of values as well as of some liberties Lord Robert Dudley (Joseph Fiennes) takes with the Queen in the presence of other people namely the court, which I don't think would be admitted at the time. Not a masterpiece but just a rather good historic movie anyway.