Elizabeth

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful film but forget about historical accuracy!
Review: A near perfect film, but a great pity to my mind that so much licence was taken with historical accuracy. The appearance of Mary of Guise, the mother of Mary, Queen of Scots, is irritating, especially when bedded, as the scriptwriter would have us believe, with Walsingham. If you can watch the film as a visual exercise, it is stunning. For that it has my four stars. If, like myself, you have a passionate regard for historical detail, you will find yourself fidgeting and dissatisfied.

Fine performances by Kate Blanchett, and it was enormous fun to see a favourite - Magda from 'Absolutely Fabulous' - "I've a business lunch wiv Anoushka 'Empel an' all me tampons 'ave dropped art!" - playing Mary Tudor so terrifyingly. One always feels sorry for 'Bloody Mary' - despite her misguided and wholly un-English zeal for burning people...

Rating:
Summary: amazing
Review: Cate Blanchett is magnificent! My top three performances of all time. I shutter to think what people in the academy must be thinking now Gwenyth has the oscar. Thank god I'm not a member!

Rating:
Summary: viewer from Florida
Review: This is one of the best period films I have ever seen! Great character development, wonderful scene location, and some of the most amazing costume design. Haunting story line that will stay with you forever. A must see!

Rating:
Summary: Tears of a clown
Review: A lightly-veiled homage to the superior Amadeus, this movie speaks of the modern plight of women everywhere who must subvert their femininity to the point of hiding their true natures behind a clown's makeup. The stunning ending is presented with the music of Mozart's Requium, but could easily be replaced by Smoky Robinson's "Tears of a Clown."

Rating:
Summary: A remarkable tour de force that overrules any criticism
Review: Cate Blanchett is superb in this amazing production of the rise to power of Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen. Not only suspenseful and full of superb acting talent, this wonderful picture is one of the best movies this decade. Historical inaccuracies are small and insignificant, and this movie can easily be watched over and over again.

Rating:
Summary: Not a documentary, not meant to be, but a GRAND movie!
Review: This was easily the best cast film of 1998, perhaps of the decade. Blanchett's Elizabeth is every bit as complex and, in the end, interestingly enigmatic, and a bit tragic, as was the historic Elizabeth I.

Those who complain that this movie is filled with historic inaccuracies miss the CLEAR intension of the movie to be a pastiche, a tableaux, an impressionistic look at Elizabeth I's rise to power. (Notice how the open credits suggest tableaux, and the rather hard edits between scenes lend the movie, slighly, a quality of a collection of scenes, not necessarily meant to be tightly woven together. Also, for those who know their Church history, the opening scene sets the impressionistic interpreation the movie follows by dressing the Roman bishops in ALL black, even their mitres. No such liturgical vestment has ever existed, even for Requiem Masses...the Roman Church, in this movie, is The Bad Guy, and its representatives are costumed accordingly. This is not an historical mistake, it is an ARTISTIC CHOICE, and it works.)

Geoffrey Rush's portrayal of the historical Lord, advisor, and protector of Elizabeth I is subtle and utterly amazing. And the writing helps developes the character well, too. Lord Wallsingham's homosexuality was rather an open, albeit quiet, secret w/in Elizabeth's court. It was also why he was trusted until the very end...Elizabeth knew his heart would always be unclouded by the various matrimonial schemes surrounding her and drawing in many of her other advisors. Thus the movie's clever and subtle consistency in first showing Rush's character in the company of a young man (in a bedroom), then showing him w/ another young, attractive man who works w/ him as an apprentice spy, and finally sending him off to engage with Mary of Scots in a way one could hypothesize a heterosexual man might be less able to. (I am vague in order to not give away too many surprises.)

This movie is a feast for the eyes. It is dark, to be sure--black costumes, torch-lit corridors, and scenes at night abound--but, again, these are good impressionistic choices that set off the BRIGHT moments in the movie during which Elizabeth's early innocence and later power are communicated. I don't give this movie a full 5 stars only because of what were, I feel, some very poor decisions regarding the soundtrack (Mozart's Requium and Elgar w/in the same crucial scene! ) and a handful of spots where the pacing could have been picked up. All in all, however, this is a GREAT movie and a MUST HAVE.

Rating:
Summary: A remarkable historic database.
Review: Elizabeth is a remarkable historic database! It is a movie concerning the ascension of a new English queen, queen Elizabeth I, in a country divided by religious matters, when catholics and protestants established a civil war due to their contradictory ideologies. The highlight of this motion picture is, undoubtly, Cate Blanchett's performance as the virgin queen, which is not an easy role to perform; even though, she performed it with spectacular talent: a queen that governed with her heart and to her people, a queen married with England!

Rating:
Summary: History? See it for entertainment instead!
Review: Okay, 4 stars because of the rewriting of history. (Issue already addressed....)

Anyway, again, another Hollywood eye-candy treat. Visual splendour, excellent acting, and a plot that intrigues. Cate Blanchette is a fine actress and does a wonderful turn as she evolves from shy, timid Princess Elizabeth to strong-willed, take no prisoners Queen Elizabeth. After all, as she says: "I am my father's daughter."

Beautifully filmed with an even lovelier production design--scenery, costumes and all.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: Wonderful movie. Totally gripping and looking more like the Godfather than a period piece.

There is some historical inaccuracy though. Elizabeth knew of Dudley's marriage all along and the French marriage proposal didn't come along until she was in her forties. However Dudley was the same age as her, it was the Earl of ESSEX who was 30 years her junior. They really should make another film about her and Mary Queen of Scots.

Cate Blanchett is amazing as she goes from an innocent girl to an all-powerful monarch who has no choice but to crush her enemies. She was completely ROBBED of an Oscar for this role. Her performance is of so much higher a quality than Gwyneth Paltrow's in Shakespeare that you wonder if voters bothered with watching this movie at all.

Rating:
Summary: Too dark and limited
Review: I did not like this film at all. I think it is useless to comment about its hostorical incorrectness: the preceding reviews have been really exaustive. What I would like to talk about is the film's atmosphere. Too dark. Renaissance times were not so gloomy. esides, the movie bears no trace of the literary outburts that England knew under Elizabeth. Were was Philip Sydney? Were was Sir Walter Raleigh? It completely skipped Elizabeth's interest in the New World: no trace of Francis Drake or Humphrey Gilbert. Finally, there wasn't even the slightest hint to Mary Stuart. The film director has made a really messy job with his material. Elizabeth's qualities as one of the greatest monacrhs in history just are not there. Watching the movie one gets the idea that her only problem in life was marriage, which is not true. A bad film, in spite of costumes and good performers.