Shameless exploitation film, inferior re-tread with bad direction

Rating: 4/10 (27 July 2008)

The BBC made a TV series of this in 2003 and then decided to flog that horse again, so this was the result, an inferior feature film, very badly directed indeed by Justin Chadwick. The casting is terrible. The history is nonsense. (Anne Boleyn was the younger sister, not the older one as misrepresented in the novel, etc., etc.) Despite the terrible flaws in this misconceived monster of a project, some sterling performances do stand out. The most impressive is Ana Torent, the Spanish actress who has been a favourite of true cineastes since she played a 12-year-old in 'El Nido' (1980). She nearly steals the film, and if it were not for Scarlett Johansson being so good, she would have. Johansson has a natural dignity and an innate sensitivity to period (as she showed in 'Girl with a Pearl Earring'), so she and Ana Torent were perfectly capable of directing themselves and pulling off magnificent performances. Natalie Portman was a casting disaster. In the first part of the film, obviously wholly lacking in any meaningful direction, she tries to portray the flighty young Anne but does so as a 2008 girl, complete with the same knowing looks and arrogant insouciance you would expect to find in that wonderful satire 'Clueless' (1995), rather than in a period drama. In the latter part of the film, where at last she has a definable character and situation which she can at last figure out, she delivers some very powerful dramatic acting indeed, but always with too modern a touch. She was simply not made for the 16th century, sorry. Australian Eric Bana is totally and even more disastrously miscast as King Henry VIII. Since everyone knows that Henry was gingery in appearance and inclined to corpulence, why do we see this ludicrous version of him as a kind of brooding macho chap who has just stepped in from the set of 'Star Trek'? For more than half of the film, everybody addresses the king as 'Your Grace', whereas for the whole of English history, no such form of address was ever used for a king, but was only used for bishops, dukes, and duchesses. More than halfway through, unable to re-shoot their earlier scenes, they suddenly realize their mistake and start calling him 'Your Majesty', but it is too late. David Morissey is way, way over the top in his portrayal of the Duke of Norfolk. There was clearly no directorial control with this production at all. Was Chadwick sitting gagged and bound in a corner, one wonders? Even that old pro Kristin Scott-Thomas wobbles in her early scenes, unsure of what everybody is meant to be doing. Mark Rylance looks like he needs to run and do diarrhoea in every scene. Eddie Redmayne does very well, which I am glad to see, as he never went to drama school and defied parental advice to be a banker, so he pulled it off before his father's three years of support was up, well done Eddie. Juno Temple does as well as she could in an undefined part with no help. Why do they keep doing this to history? Why don't they just tell the TRUE stories and be accurate once in a while? Truth is more interesting than all this nonsensical, exploitative fantasy. The producers, director, script writer, head of the BBC, and the whole sorry lot responsible for this abomination should be taken out and shot. No, correction, - beheaded! Must get it right!