Gripping Drama but ambitious and inaccurate.

Rating: 8/10 (10 March 2008)

I always thought it was overly-ambitious to try to turn Philippa Gregory's novel The Other Boleyn Girl into a film. It turns out, I was almost right. The novel took liberties with history and the film takes liberties with the novel - and with history - but they do say that you should never let the truth get in the way of a good story. And it is a good story; albeit hastily told. The breakneck pace of the plot leaves some holes (what happened to Mary's first husband?, for instance) that will confuse anyone who hasn't read the book and some of the story's more touching aspects have been entirely ignored. It seems that detail and subtlety have been martyred to the expediencies of fitting a decade of history into two hours of cinema. That said, the film is a feast of sumptuous period drama, charting the changing affections of a fickle absolute monarch and the shifting relationship between his erstwhile mistress and her determined sister. Natalie Portman convinces ably as the callous and self-serving Anne, willing to sacrifice everything, including her sister's happiness, for her own position; but her ambition makes it hard to care much for her, even as she weeps on the scaffold. You can't help but think she brought it upon herself. Moreover, she is somewhat eclipsed by Scarlett Johannson's moving and very human performance as Mary. Her pain at her sister's betrayal and her subsequent determination to stand by Anne make her the indisputable heroine of the story. Eric Bana plays a conflicted Henry well, a man who barely has the time to fall out of love with one sister before the other is thrust in front of him. His fear of leaving his realm heirless and his reluctance to put aside his blameless first wife give depth to what would otherwise be a lustful and petulant man. The supporting cast all hold their own in roles that give them little scope to fulfil their potential. It seems a shame to give an actress like Kristin Scott Thomas so little screen time. Lovers of history and fans of the novel will both be aggrieved by the inaccuracies, and perhaps we should not be too hasty to dismiss such protests as pedantry. I, for one, eagerly await the day that a period drama can be both accurate and gripping. For now, this film competently achieves the latter.