"Elizabeth" A Film Review by Linda Lopez McAlister on "The Women's Show" WMNF-FM 88.5, Tampa, FL November 21, 1998 If you live in Tampa you'll have to drive a bit to see Elizabeth--either to the Beach Theater in St. Pete Beach or the 20plex in Brandon--but it will be well worth your effort to see this intriguing portrait of England's Queen Elizabeth I, The Virgin Queen. The picture was directed by Shekhar Kapur and written by Michael Hirst. Kapur is no stranger to rather expansive films about extraordinary women. He was the director of "The Bandit Queen" a couple of years ago, about another woman leader India's Phoolan Devi. You may recall from that film that as a director he had a bit of a taste for the lurid and voyueristic. That shows up in Elizabeth, too, but here it serves the film well, for voyeurism is an integral part of the Tudor court at the time the young Elizabeth ascended to the throne. This is a far better film than "The Bandit Queen" was. Kapur is now working in Britain with a far larger budget and highly experienced actors such as Geoffery Rush, Cate Blanchett, Richard Attenborough, and John Gielgud. And, if you're like me, it will give you a far different image of Elizabeth than you ever had before (how historically accurate it is, I can't say, but it certainly tells a psychologically plausible story of how an insecure and frightened young woman metamorphosed into the strong willed, self-contained, iconic image of the Virgin Queen who ruled England with an iron hand for more than forty years and developed it into the greatest world power of its time.) This is a film, the only one I've ever seen, that makes a believable human being of Elizabeth. In Cate Blanchett's compelling character study she show us first the young Princess, at the same time funloving and fearing for her life as the battle for the succession to the throne of England swirls on around her. In the opening sequences she is dancing with her ladies-in-waiting and in a romantic tryst with her lover Robert Dudley, Duke of Leicester and then is marched off by her dying sister Queen Mary's soldiers to the Tower of London where Elizabeth expects to be murdered that very night by Mary's Catholic supporters who fear the possibility of the Protestant Elizabeth's ascending to the throne. Mary, however, can't bring herself to order her half sister's murder, so Elizabeth is placed under house arrest. When Mary does die and Elizabeth ascends to the throne, there are plots on her life everywhere, both Spain and France seek royal marriages with England in order to form political alliances, Mary of Guise, also known as Mary Queen of Scots (I believe) is amassing troops in Scotland with French help in order to pursue a Stuart claim to the throne. Sir Francis Walsingham (Geoffrey Rush), a supporter of Elizabeth, returns from exile to the Tudor court in order to protect and defend Elizabeth's throne. If the film is accurate, the man is involved in a lot more than dirty tricks like locking up members of the opposition when crucial votes are being taken in Parliament. He is also portrayed as murdering at least two pretenders to the throne. At first Elizabeth has no idea what to do as Queen and Sir William Cecil and her other advisors manage to give her astoundingly bad advice which she follows. But her sharp intellect and even sharper wit enable her to gradually begin to hold her own in debates with the politicians that surround her, and to resist in particular their repeated exhortations that the only way she'll survive as Queen is to marry the King of France or a transvestite Duke of Anjou from France. The only one she loves and actually wants to marry is Robert Dudley, but that is not to be. Eventually, with Walsingham's help she succeeds in removing or subduing her enemies and making sure that the Catholics are oout of power and the Anglican Church that her father, Henry VIII, started is the established Church of England. The really intriguing thing about the film's interpretation of Elizabeth is its suggestion that she actually regretted one aspect of the loss of Catholicism, namely, the loss of the veneration of the Virgin Mary. She agreed with her sister, Queen Mary, who had begged her not to take of away the figure of the Virgin from the people of England who adored her. And, it suggests strongly that Elizabeth made a very deliberate decision to cut off her hair (in the fashion of a nun), dress in a chaste manner with covered arms and high necked dresses with formidible ruffs, to paint her face almost alabaster white, take a personal vow of chastity (something she had not previously been), and to put herself forward as a substitute Virgin for the adoration of her people. Instead of the Virgin Mary they now had Elizabeth the Virgin Queen to venerate. What an intriguing idea. I should mention that this film has plenty of action, intrigue, drama, music, dancing and really just grabs you and sucks you into the world of the 16th C English court. It should not be seen as a "woman's film" only; it has enough action and blood and gore to satisfy even teenage boys, I would imagine. And it might do them good to see as strong a woman as Elizabeth on the screen. For the WMNF Women's Show, this is Linda Lopez McAlister on Women and Film. Copyright 1998. All rights reserved. Please do not copy or reproduce this review without permission of the author: mcaliste@chuma.cas.usf.edu.