Closed World

Rating: Null/10 (28 September 2008)

I'm an easier audience than most. Cheap effects, poor production skills by modern standards and cheap theatrics are all ignored when there is even the dullest of hooks. I grab and am willingly pulled through. Hey, I even liked "Miss Congeniality." I even cried at the disgustingly manipulative "Little Miss Sunshine."
So I could have cruised through this, hanging on the one device it has: our surrogate viewer in Mary. It could have worked too, if Scarlett was a deeper actress and was able to convey that all the lushness we see is because her eye is in a decorated mind. It could have worked if it wasn't such a closed world.
The "closed world" deal means this: everything we see is "explained" or tightly bound up in the story? Henry is king? Well then his kingliness is bound up exclusively in dressing, having fun and worrying about babies. There's no tie to anything outside what is carefully strung together with visible ribbons. No character, no urge, no happening crosses the shell that contains what we see. This is underscored by the way the cinematographer handles the visuals. Yes, he gives us more lushness in framing and positions than usual.
But in keeping with the costumes, these are all from a well known vocabulary, just more elaborate. And the physical framing is closed world. Its stagy. There's nothing that bleeds off the frame to imply that there is anything at all in the universe but what you see.
This is why people call this soap opera-ish. It isn't because of the emotional dynamics themselves, which are strong enough to matter in a worthwhile container. Its this notion from the TeeVee that there are only a few people in the world and the story is just a matter of who sleeps with who.
But there's a larger opportunity missed here. There really are only two choices you have when combining great societal movements with personal emotions in this way. Either you can posit a world of great souls who somehow pull the world into a future, shaping by the power of being they have. Then we study that power.
Or you go the way that things seem to the audience: things happen that are uncontrollable triggering incidental forces on the people who are in the way: political leaders and interesting people notwithstanding. Its something friendly to the noir tradition that we know a lot about now. They did neither here, and since they didn't give us a known cosmos, that stifling of the closed world is accentuated.
Too bad. This was an interesting time, leading up to and preparing the way for the literary enlightenment that still glows, now in film. The times literally resulted in a storied way from what emerged from then through Shakespeare and Harriot, through settling the new world with idealists rather than simple catholic thugs.... on through to the creation of the rich vehicles for thought we have now: like the stuff a available to grab for this film and this comment.
Henry was a responsible monarch, less driven by personal desire to see a spawn rule, but more concerned about shaping the future. That meant severing ties with the Catholics, a tie denoted by his marriage. She had to go for reasons outside her womb. The entanglements of religion, wealth, power had to be reshaped. We know he was most thoughtful in this, that he recognized a dying feudal system and the rise of urbanism. We know that his daughter  far less intelligent  followed through with his plan and got all the credit.
None of this open world stuff is visible here. The women don't even seem desirable, and that blows the whole soap opera deal.
Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.