(R)


Elizabeth I: Cate Blanchett
Sir Francis Walsingham: Geoffrey Rush
Duke of Norfolk: Christopher Eccleston
Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester: Joseph Fiennes
Sir William Cecil: Richard Attenborough
Alvara de la Quadra: James Frain
Mary of Guise: Fanny Ardant
The Pope: John Gielgud


Directed by Shekhar Kapur. Written by Michael Hirst. Running time: 124 minutes. Rated R (for violence and sexuality).

BY ROGER EBERT

The England of the first Elizabeth is a dark and sensuous place; the court lives intimately with treachery, and cloaks itself in shadows and rude luxury. As seen through the fresh eyes of an Indian director, Shekhar Kapur, ``Elizabeth'' is not a light ``Masterpiece Theater'' production, but one steeped in rich, saturated colors and emotions. The texture of the film is enough to recommend it, even apart from the story.

Cate Blanchett stars as Elizabeth I, who in 1558, at the age of 25, took the throne of a Catholic country, declared it Protestant, fought off assassination by the French, the Spanish, her rivals and the pope, and ruled for 45 years. She succeeded, the film demonstrates, by learning on the job, growing from a naive girl to a willful strategist who picked her advisers well and ignored them when they urgently advised her to marry: ``I will have one mistress here! And no master!''

She was known as the Virgin Queen. Virginity for her, as for so many, was something she grew into. As the film opens, she frolics with her lover, Robert Dudley (Joseph Fiennes), and her ardor only subsides as she realizes no man loves the Queen of England only for herself. She is contemptuous of such other suitors as the Duke of Anjou (Vincent Cassel), who sees marriage as a social move, and is surprised while frolicking in a frock. And her eyes narrow as she listens to proposals couriered in by various rulers who want to marry her as a sort of mergers and acquisitions deal.

The screenplay provides a series of hard-edged conversations in which Elizabeth's enemies conspire against her, and her friends urgently counsel her while she teaches herself to tell true allies from false ones. She is much helped in the beginning by white-bearded old Sir William Cecil (Richard Attenborough), although there comes a time when he must be put to pasture, and Attenborough's character accepts this news with humility that is truly touching.

Then the lurking, sinister Sir Francis Walsingham (Geoffrey Rush) moves to her side and brilliantly helps guide her to triumph. He's instrumental to the plot, even though his role is at first murky. After Elizabeth's archrival Mary of Guise (Fanny Ardant) sends her a poisoned dress that luckily claims the life of another, it is Sir Francis who adroitly convinces Mary he will betray Elizabeth. Francis and Mary spend a night together, and in the morning, Mary is dead. It didn't happen like that in history, but it should have.

The movie, indeed, compresses and rewrites history at its own convenience, which is the rule anyway with English historical romances. What it gets right is the performance by Cate Blanchett, who was so good as the poker-playing glass manufacturer in ``Oscar and Lucinda'' (1997) and here uncannily comes to resemble the great monarch. She is saucy and heedless at first, headstrong when she shouldn't be, but smart, and able to learn. By the end she has outsmarted everyone and become one of the rare early female heads of state to rule successfully without an alliance with a man.

Shekhar Kapur, who directed ``The Bandit Queen'' (1995) about a fierce modern Indian Robin Hood, here clothes Elizabeth, her court and her architecture in the colors and texture of medieval India. The film is largely set in vast, echoing halls, their pillars reaching up into the shadows. He is attentive to the rustle of dresses and the clank of armor, gives us a barge on the Thames like a houseboat on a lake in Kashmir. Action is glimpsed through iron filigree screens, dresses are rich with embroidery, hairstyles are ornately elaborated, and yet there is the feeling that just out of sight of these riches are the rats in the kitchen and the slop-pots in the halls. This is not the Ye Olde approach, but a society still inventing gentility; sex is so linked with politics that old Sir William demands to inspect Elizabeth's sheets every morning, to keep tabs on possibly alarming developments in her private life.

At the end of the film, Elizabeth announces, ``I have become a virgin.'' And so she remained, ruling over and in some sense creating the England that gave us Shakespeare. Think what a play he might have written about her, if commoners had been allowed to create characters out of reigning monarchs. No doubt he retired in sheer frustration.

And Blanchett's porcelain beauty will become a lasting visual reference whenever you hear the name Elizabeth I.

Like a virgin

Shekhar Kapur's Elizabeth, wooden teeth and all

ELIZABETH

BY GEMMA FILES

Sects and secrecy. Plots and counterplots. The temptations of love versus the demands of duty. Swords and poison and corsets, oh my!

If history really is innately boring, as all my peers in high school certainly seemed to think, then Elizabeth -- the brilliant new film from Indian director Shekhar Kapur, which abandons the prim and proper "official version" of British Queen Elizabeth I's life in favor of a whirlwind tour through its tumultuous and passionate original facts -- must surely be an exercise in cleverly disguised fiction.

"But you could say the same about so much of what we take for granted as 'historically accurate,' " Shekhar pointed out during our interview at this year's Toronto International Film Festival. "As a filmmaker, you feel constant pressure to bring the past back to life somehow, to render it immediate and contemporary in a visceral, emotional way -- which is ridiculous, when you think about it, since you're dealing with human events performed by human beings, and human motivations simply don't change so much as to be no longer understandable! People are always doing the same things for the same reasons -- money, power, love, revenge -- in only slightly different ways. Stress the similarities, and the differences become easy to explain."

He pauses. "I know that if they make a film about me 400 years from now, I would hate for it to be some classic period piece full of people in big, stiff clothes moving around on big, stiff sets. I don't want people being bored by my life! And if we actually were able to talk to any of the historical figures portrayed in Elizabeth, they'd probably say the same."

Co-star Christopher Eccleston, who plays Elizabeth's enemy, the Duke of Norfolk, agrees.

"The very first thing I said to Shekhar was that if all he could offer me was a two-dimensional villain, then I wasn't interested in doing it," he says. "Because I truly believe that the more powerful and formidable Norfolk seems, the more real Elizabeth's triumph becomes when she manages to out-think and out-manoeuvre him. It's a real achievement, then, not just a foregone conclusion."

Very un-Hollywood thinking, I suggest.

Eccleston nods. "It's like Geoffrey Rush's character, Walsingham -- he's Elizabeth's Master of Spies, and he becomes her right-hand advisor, the person who can do all the bad things she has to order done. His job is to get his hands dirty, so hers can stay clean. And this is very difficult for people raised on Arnold Schwarzenegger movies to understand -- that you can be amoral, but for essentially moral reasons."

With its desperation and ambiguity, Elizabeth shares far more in common with Kapur's own last film -- the violent and wrenching Bandit Queen -- than with any previous big-budget costume epic. Full of sensual, tactile detail and blistering dramatic heat, it also showcases a revelatory performance by Australian Cate Blanchett (Oscar And Lucinda) as the Virgin Queen-to-be, along with a raft of equally high-powered co-stars. They include Rush, Eccleston and 1997 Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Kathy Burke (Nil By Mouth) as Elizabeth's demented half-sister Mary Tudor, whose death catapults the young queen onto the throne of a country wracked by religious turmoil and economic instability.

Beset on all sides by foreign suitors and home-grown conspirators, Elizabeth must become ruthless enough to survive the twists and turns of a plot so complex even Kapur admits he was occasionally unsure who was doing what to whom (or why).

"It was a great advantage for me to approach the project as an outsider," Kapur says. "Since Elizabeth's story isn't part of my culture, I wasn't saddled with that automatic reverence for royalty which still keeps the English from being able to see her as a real person. Even now, they're obsessed with the idea of her being a literal virgin -- it's like the way they treat the existing Royal Family. As long as they're looking at her, they never have to look at themselves.

"But the facts of the case are always so different from the way that 'approved' history makes them appear. I mean, let's face it: no one wore underwear, they all stank and Elizabeth had wooden teeth. So anything we say about her can't be too insulting -- especially since it's true!"

Or mainly true.

Kapur smiles and shrugs. "Exactly."

Rating: 8 out of 10

ELIZABETH

Certificate: 15

Running time: 123 mins

Starring: Cate Blanchett, Joseph Fiennes, Geoffrey Rush, Christopher Eccleston, Sir John Gielgud

In terms of educating the celluloid masses, British cinema has - led by Messrs Merchant and Ivory - been largely responsible for classic literature; historical disciplines left for the most part to Hollywood, notably one Mr S. Spielberg.

But now, the past is coming home - only not like you'd ever have imagined.

For in the hands of Indian director Shekhar Kapur and an eclectic, ensemble cast, the fraught and precarious forging of Elizabethan England is brought vividly to life by telling a story of repressed love, political chicanery and murderous conspiracy.

Imprisoned for her Protestant beliefs on trumped up treason charges, Princess Elizabeth (Cate Blanchett) - daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn - survives to inherit the throne of England when rabidly Catholic half-sister Queen Mary (Kathy Burke) fails to sign the death warrant before herself passing into history.

But the dangers are far from over. Barely disguised French and Spanish threats loom large from north and south, not to mention the courtly machinations of the power-hungry Duke of Norfolk (Christopher Eccleston), and fury of Pope Pius V (John Gielgud), the most powerful man in the world.

And it's through characters, rather than events, that this no-holds-barred portrait of the young QEI unfolds.

Blanchett's curve from fright and despair to resistance and aggression is played with considerable skill, particularly in the face of influential suitors- from childhood sweetheart Robert Dudley (Joseph Fiennes) to the manic Duc D'Anjou (Vincent Cassel), represented by a burgeoning young actor called Eric Cantona - and the superbly calculated villainy of Eccleston's Norfolk.

Perhaps most influential in her early reign though, were chief advisor Sir William Cecil (Richard Attenborough) and close confidant Sir Francis Walsingham (Geoffrey Rush) - both excellent - the latter's talent for espionage credited with beginning the British Secret Service.

And Kapur's major triumph is in diffusing accusations of stunt-casting by weaving these disparate performers into a cohesive unit, and surrounding them with a foreboding, stone-clad society of rigid tradition and fearsome ruthlessness.

He has fun with his foreign ambassadors though - a comic-relief technique which no doubt would be considered xenophobic from a British director - but reins them in just short of complete farce.

Indeed, it is the French prince, not his Envoy, who's painted as the prancing fool (the former Old Trafford hero actually a formidable presence), and likewise, the faintly absurd tone of James Frain's Spanish emissary darkens into Machiavellian scheming as the film lengthens.

In the interests of dramatic art, some defensible liberties have been taken with the passage of time - bringing, among others, Gallic actress Fanny Ardant's sexy and sinister Mary of Guise into the frame - without compromising over allveracity.

Neither cinematic history lecture, nor modern movie dressed in period design, but instead a superbly judged blend of the two - entertainment in its own right, certainly, with a wealth of suggestion and interpretation lurking beneath the surface.

It's a man's world...

It is 1554 in England and the devoutly Catholic monarch, Queen Mary (Kathy Burke) is determined to prosecute with vigour any expressions of the Protestant faith. However, her half sister, Elizabeth (Cate Blanchett), is a practising Protestant and the Queen's advisors, particularly the Earl of Norfolk (Christopher Eccleston) urge her to arrest and try her sibling for treason. Mary has Elizabeth arrested and summons her to the palace. Since she is ill, she begs Elizabeth to stay true to the Catholic faith after her [Mary's] death. Elizabeth demurs. Upon Mary's death, she assumes power.

As a princess, Elizabeth had led a carefree existence with her ladies-in-waiting and her lover, Robert Dudley (Joseph Fiennes). As Queen, she is faced with numerous threats and dangers. Since she is a Protestant, the Catholic noblemen (including Norfolk) and abetted by the Pope (John Gielgud) regard her as a heretic (as well as an illegitimate usurper). Both Spain and France are plotting against her, and their ambassadors at her court (James Frain and Eric Cantona, respectively) are constantly attempting to gain advantage over each other. And, of course, Elizabeth is a woman, surrounded by strong-willed men; noblemen, bishops, soldiers who share the same dim view of a woman's abilities.

The French have an army in Scotland and Elizabeth , under pressure from Norfolk and other advisors such as William Cecil (Richard Attenborough), orders a disastrous attack against them. It is easily repelled by the French under the command of Mary de Guise (Fanny Ardent) who poses a threat to Elizabeth.

Her transformation from a princess, acting from the heart, to a queen (ruling with her head) is ably assisted by the utterly loyal Walsingham (Geoffrey Rush), who ruthlessly weeds out any opposition to his queen, and constantly reminds her of her duties when she must make unpalatable decisions (which usually involves the removal of heads).

Shekhar Kapur's follow-up to Bandit Queen (1994) is a dramatic affair, as befits an account of the turbulent and violent beginning to Elizabeth the First's reign, and like his earlier film, is centred on the struggle of a determined woman to assert her independence. Like his previous film, the performance of the eponymous heroine is central to the story, and Cate Blanchett gives a splendid portrayal of the young queen, torn between her duty to her country and her own desires. Likewise, Geoffrey Rush is splendid as the shadowy Walsingham. (Rush and Fiennes also appear in Shakespeare in Love, but in Elizabeth, their roles are reversed; Rush plays the serious role while Fiennes has the frivolous role).

This period in Britain's history has produced a large number of movies over the years, most notably A Man for all Seasons (1966), The Virgin Queen (1955), Mary, Queen of Scots (1971) as well as the excellent BBC television series, Elizabeth R (starring Glenda Jackson as Elizabeth). However, Elizabeth seems to be inspired most by the French film, La Reine Margot (1994) which starred Isabelle Adjani , Daniel Auteuil and Vincent Perez. Like Elizabeth, the film featured the power struggle between the Catholics and Protestants noble families (albeit with a much higher body count), and the doomed affair between a Queen and a nobleman (Adjani and Perez). In fact, both films share the same historical character (the frivolous French prince Anjou). However, while La Reine Margot was an unashamedly big budget epic, Elizabeth plays more like a filmed Shakespearean play (and not one of the happy plays, at that). There is a lot of skulking and plotting in shadows which is not terribly dramatic (in a cinematic sense), and the tone remains grim throughout. The cast do their best, and the performances are generally very good throughout, particularly Rush and Eccleston as the strong-willed Norfolk. Eric Cantona, the former footballer, is well out of his depth, and though he doesn't bump into the furniture, he will be remembered for his football, on the strength of this performance.

However, Blanchett dominates this film and her performance is superb throughout. The best scenes are not the romantic encounters with Fiennes but the political plotting with Rush, and the film is at its most powerful when they share the screen.

Kapur's direction is restrained (especially when compared to the wholesale slaughter depicted in La Reine Margot), though he seems to have a predilection for overhead shots, and he seems to light every interior scene as if it were a tribute to Caravaggio. He also shamelessly lifts a scene from the Godfather (when Elizabeth orders the arrest/demise of a number of her enemies) but he's not the first director to do that.

The movie is not much use as a history lesson (if my encyclopaedia is to be believed), but the screenplay's changes to historical facts do not improve the plotting or pace of the movie. In fact, Elizabeth portrayal as a religious moderate in the film makes her enemies motive for removing her harder to understand, and in general, the political machinations become a little tedious at times. In addition, Walsingham's advancement from courtier to loyal lieutenant is never satisfactorily explained. Another plot element, which is never satisfactorily explored, is the relationship between the homosexual Walsingham and the 'virgin' Queen. It is an intriguing thought that the closeness of their bond is due to the fact that he will never desire Elizabeth in a way that would subjugate her, rather than purely on Walsingham's unswerving loyalty to the Crown. The film is more convincing and engrossing when focussed on Elizabeth's transformation, both as woman and queen. This is a tribute to Blanchett's ability as an actress, and her performance certainly deserves the Oscar nomination she has received.

Directed by Shekhar Kapur.