Old-fashioned and heavy

Rating: 4/10 (17 February 2008)

Rooted in the tradition of the BBC historical piece with a thick glossy Hollywood layer on top, the movie tells the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn through the complicated relationship with her younger sister Mary who first won the favours of king Henry VIII - that's why Anne refers to herself at one point as "the other Boleyn girl" even if in the end it will be her name to survive. The point of view of sister rivalry in the wake of court life and family ambition looks promising for the first part of the film, making sense of the elaborated costumes and sets in what is largely uncharted or minor territories in historical terms. Portman and Johansson as young superstars are in fact a good choice to level the field for the match between the Boleyn sisters.
However at some point the fiction needs to cross history and since there witty remarks leave place for solemn declarations, gloomy palace halls and a pompous dramatic musical score, and the film sinks down inexorably by effect of its own weight all the way to the end. The last minutes of the movie are in fact intolerable, ending with historical footnotes (what happened to the King, to the Duke of Norfolk, etc.), a link to the opening sequence to show "the circle of life" and a dedication to Anne's only daughter, most recent darling of historical flicks, Elizabeth.
And yet in all of this the historical simplification is such that the audience will likely get the idea that the only reason for Henry VIII to break from Catholic Church and create the Church of England has been to marry Anne Boleyn... Beautiful for the eyes and even well-acted, it's essentially a movie from an older era.