Elizabeth

(Movie Review)

So, “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” has come out in Japan now. And the previews looked really interesting to me when I saw them. But since I had never gotten around to watching the first one, which came out some 10 years ago, I decided to start with that.

This film is a historical biopic (obviously), and because I’m a history geek I can’t review a movie like this without getting into the historical accuracy of it. Sorry. It’s in my blood.

Now, when it comes to Queen Elizabeth, I don’t really know much about her at all. So I went into this movie pretty much blind, in good faith that what I was watching was more or less based on history. And then afterwards of course I fact checked it on the internet.

It turns out that most of this movie (in fact the whole premise really) isn’t historically accurate at all. As always wikipedia is a quick and easy reference, and you can read their description of the “dramatic licenses” of the film there. Queen Elizabeth was well aware that Sir Robert Dudley was married, because she had attended his wedding. To the best of our historical knowledge, Elizabeth’s claim to virginity holds up and she was not sleeping around with Dudley. Robert Dudley was not involved in a conspiracy against Queen Elizabeth. Sir Norfolk was not executed for his part in the conspiracy, but killed for a different conspiracy much later. Elizabeth was not as tolerant towards Catholics as the movie leads us to believe, but still tortured and killed Catholic priests just for being such. Et cetera.

The question now becomes: how big of a crime is this? Hollywood has a long history of getting very defensive whenever its historical accuracy is questioned. “Come on! It’s just a movie! It’s not supposed to be historically accurate. We create art, not documentaries. If you want accuracy, go read a book.” Et cetera.

But it strikes me that a lot of this is Hollywood trying to have its cake and eat it to. “Come on down. Bring the kids. It’s an historical movie. You’ll learn something. Give us an Academy Award!” (All of which is followed by their usual defensiveness whenever they are accused of historical inaccuracies).

I think that most people want historically accuracy in movies. People want to mix entertainment with education. And many people today see movies as an easier alternative to reading books (which of course it is). But just because they took the easier way out doesn’t mean they want to be given misinformation.

There are of course limitations in the medium. You do have to compress for time. Occasionally create composite characters. Simply some complex political situations. But within those constraints, I think the public genuinely would like historical accuracy when it goes to an historical movie. (Anyone who disagrees with this can feel free to comment below).

And with a movie like this in particular, I don’t think I would have sat through it if I hadn’t believed I was learning some history at the time. (Well, I guess if you count the internet research I did afterwards, I did learn a bit of history from the whole experience, but that’s not the point.) I mean, it’s not like you’re watching “Gladiator” or “Young Guns” here. All you’ve got in this movie is a bunch of courtroom scenes and talking heads.

With a movie like this, all of the drama is based upon the assumption that you’re watching something real that happened to real people. All of those courtroom scenes carry weight precisely because you think these are actual historical conspiracies. If this is supposed to be fiction, it’s pretty lousy fiction: a half-backed courtroom conspiracy, and a sappy love story.

Obviously the film makers thought they could get away with this because the film takes place so long ago, and concerns a country that isn’t America. (It would be hard to imagine the BBC producing a film like this). And who knows about anything about Elizabethan history? I certainly didn’t.

And, although in 2008 it is very easy for me to fact check this movie, in 1997 when this movie first came out it the Internet was 10 years younger. In those days if you spent a half hour or so searching around you could find, maybe, a private site where some cranky historian had listed all the historical inaccuracies of the movie. But there was no quick and easy reference back then like wikipedia is today.

If my theory is right about people wanting historical accuracy when they go to see historical movies, it will be interesting to see if in the years to come the internet crowd will begin to exert an influence on Hollywood.

Link of the Day
What will those crazy liberals think of next?

Elizabeth: Movie Review (Scripted)