February 22-23 movie: Elizabeth I. This was the HBO miniseries from 2 years ago, starring Helen Mirren as Elizabeth and Jeremy Irons as Robert Dudley. Mirren is outstanding. Irons is wonderful too, although I wish they had given him more to do. On the other hand, maybe it's better that his part was a bit, ah, restrained. He does have a tendency towards the mass consumption of scenery. The actors playing Walsingham and Robert Cecil were also excellent. Essex too, although his vague resemblance to one of the hobbits was a little distracting.
The movie covers the latter part of Elizabeth's life: the failed attempts to arrange a marriage for her, the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, the victory over the Spanish Armada, her relationship with Essex, his rebellion, and her death. That's a lot to cover in a four-hour miniseries. It's not totally accurate (for instance the movie shows Elizabeth having clandestine meetings with both Mary and James of Scotland, neither of which really happened I think). But as I read on another review, if you get all your history from movies then you have bigger problems!
I like to look up the characters on the internets while watching a historical movie like this. From Wikipedia I learned that Essex' weaselly friend & co-conspirator Southampton was a major patron of Shakespeare. There's even a theory that the sonnets were written for him. None of that comes out in the movie of course; there Southampton is just a moustache-twirling sidekick. The funny thing about Wikipedia is that I happened to hit Sir Francis Bacon's page right after someone had added phony information: the first paragraph said that Bacon had starred in the movie Footloose and had won a special Fancy Footwork Oscar. Under the "Early Life" subhead it also said something very strange about Bacon eating his great-grandmother due to her resemblance to a giant pink crustacean. Five minutes later I went back to the page so I could show it to Georg, and it was gone already.
One final note about Elizabeth I: the gore level is very high for a costume drama. I counted two head-choppings, one hand-chopping, one hanging, and three unbelievably graphic depictions of the Babington conspirators being hanged, drawn and quartered. In a way I'm almost glad to have seen it, because I didn't know before what that meant exactly. And now I do know. Exactly. In horrifying detail.
2 Comments
Huh, I can see your point about the actor who played Essex. He definitely resembles Elijah Wood, with a little Sean Astin in there. Sort of a generic Jacksonian hobbit.
I didn't know half of that about Bacon!
Did you know that drawing and quartering is how they get bacon from a pig?
You don't mean that they pull out the pig's intestines while it's still alive and conscious? burn the intestines and genitalia in front of it? then cut the pig into four parts?
If so I may have to seriously reconsider vegetarianism.