so close to great, but falls far short

Rating: 5/10 (17 January 2005)

Queen Elizabeth was perhaps the most powerful woman in history, so I find it hard to accept this film's portrayal of her as hesitant, dithering, and totally indebted to her advisers for her success. Even as a fledging queen, I think she was probably tougher than she is shown to be here. The way this film tells it, she wouldn't have lasted a week without the help of Geoffrey Rush - he orchestrates her every victory.
So it's not really a tale of female empowerment, is it? Granted, the movie isn't necessarily obliged to be feminist in its outlook. But I still find it disappointing on several levels. Elizabeth only becomes the formidable figure of history in the very last - and admittedly great - scene. So we never get to witness her oversee the defeat of the Spanish Armada, or commission Shakespeare to write the Merry Wives of Windsor, or anything like that. We merely get to see her order Rush to "whack" various spies, foreigners, and rivals. It's like an Elizabethan mobster movie - and it's clearly trying too hard to be sexy and violent to work.
I wanted more boring stuff - more religion, more politics, and definitely more character development. The whole point of the movie is that Elizabeth rejects her suitors and becomes a self-governing "virgin queen," but her suitors are such cardboard characters that her choice seems preordained. Joseph Fiennes is okay as Sir Robert, but his supposedly wonderful relationship with Elizabeth is already established at the beginning of the film - we don't see it grow, we don't really know its foundations, and I, for one, didn't care about it. And Elizabeth's French suitor, Anjou, is such an idiot that of course she can't help but turn him down. I hate conflicts like that - since Anjou is a flighty pervert, it's a forgone conclusion that Elizabeth will reject him, so all that remains is for the viewer to watch her patience with his antics slowly diminish. Yawn.
I also could've used more characterization of Christopher Eccleston's Duke of Norfolk, who basically just spends the movie stalking up and down corridors and looking surly. And was it necessary to make Queen Mary look like some weird creature of the darkness? I felt manipulated into seeing every character and situation in a particular way - Attenborough's character is obviously meant to be misguided, Queen Mary is crazy, everything Geoffrey Rush says is right, etc. All of the active, interpretative sectors of my brain simply shut down and went along for the ride.
And that's a shame, really, because this is a well-produced and superbly acted movie. But it's so fundamentally thoughtless that I ultimately can't recommend it. I wonder if they'll ever make a sequel in which Elizabeth actually accomplishes something on her own...