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SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE AND ELIZABETHShakespeare In Love (1998) Director: John Madden (II) Elizabeth (1998) Director: Shekhar Kapur
Shakespeare In Love and Elizabeth are both set in this period. Both films are woven around love stories featuring Joseph Fiennes and both have a base in both history and fiction. There the similarities end for while the Shakespeare film is a light romantic comedy, Elizabeth is a strong romantic drama. Shakespeare In Love was co-written by Tom Stoppard, author of Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead, and hence no stranger to the deconstruction and reconstruction of Shakespearean drama. In depicting the story of the first performance of Romeo and Juliet, the film employs Shakespearean motifs - such as mistaken identity - in its own composition. Historically authentic-looking sets and props are combined with Twentieth Century anachronism in the style of a 'Carry On' romp with which it shares a mild bawdiness. The film is clever but the charms of American-born Gwyneth Paltrow are rather more outstanding than the film's humour. After fending off unsuitable suitors she transforms herself into a born-again virgin married to England. This is marked by the adoption of an appearance with which we are familiar from historical representations, but which is generally presumed to reflect the ravages of small-pox and the passage of age rather than a rite of passage. This scene, however, represents much more than a liberty with history: it's a powerful symbolic sequence which makes a dramatic point, boldly lifting the film out of reality and into the surreal. Australian actress Cate Blanchett is well cast as Elizabeth both on account of her physical appearance and her very good performance, whilst aquiline Christopher Eccleston is marvellous as the sinister and scheming noble, the Duke of Norfolk. Music and lighting conjure up some splendid Renaissance tableaux with more than a touch of Peter Greenaway. Other incidents strike particular historical and artistic associations. The scene of the children being asked to betray their father is straight out of the English Civil War scene depicted in W F Yeames' painting When did you last see your father?, whilst the poisoning evokes a Websterian tragedy. It's a pity the music in the dance scenes was overwhelmed with heavy and inappropriate orchestration whilst the dancing itself seemed strangely twitchy, but overall the film is a compelling dramatic work if not a work of history. Rik - 7 June 1999
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With
the balkanisation of 'Ukania' and the reconstruction of a post-British,
English identity, we can expect increasing attention to be focused on
the Elizabethan period - the mythic high-point of pre-British Englishness.
Directed
by Indian film-maker Shekhar Kapur (of Bandit Queen fame), Elizabeth
is dark and often gruesome work based in but hardly on the early period
of Elizabeth's reign as she comes to the throne of a country threatened
from abroad and racked by religious division, conspiracy and assassination.
An expedition against the Scots ends in bloody disaster, but she has more
success in leaning on the bishops and taking out her opponents in scenes
cheekily reminiscent of The Godfather.
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