| Created 2007..10.06 Updated 2007.10.06 |
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Blanchett's Elizabeth Uncertain in The
Golden Age In this sixteenth century epic, Kate Blanchett as Elizabeth I has the hots for Clive Owen as adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh. |
"I always said that if I did another one, that Elizabeth shouldn't be the central character", says Cate Blanchett, who is Elizabeth in Elizabeth, the Golden Age. Blanchett got her wish. The central character in The Golden Age is Sir Walter Raleigh. Wonderfully played by Clive Owen, he's the adventurer, the hero of this film. He establishes a colony in the New World. The naval scenes with Raleigh fighting the Spanish Armada, toward the end of the film, are epic. If only that was the whole film. Raleigh is who we want to see more.
Do we care about Elizabeth, an uncertain queen consumed by court intrigues and vicariously participating in the courtship of her maid by Raleigh? In this sequel, Blanchett says she considered an older Elizabeth, "being physically unstable…she would have been quite menopausal." Cate Blanchett, playing a younger Elizabeth, was nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role in the 1998 film Elizabeth. Describing watching herself in Elizabeth recently Blanchett says, "Being an actress in film is a bit like aging in dog years; it's quite confronting."
"I would describe all history as fiction and interpretation", says director Shekhar Kapur, who was nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture for Elizabeth. "Spain…imagine if the Armada had succeeded. The history books would have been written in Spanish." The Golden Age isn't in Spanish, but is a less flattering Elizabeth than history suggests. Rising from being a prisoner locked in The Tower, Elizabeth was the queen who took a country bankrupt from Spanish wars and transformed it into a world power. "Elizabeth the 1st is iconic", says Blanchett. "The Elizabethan Age is when English culture as we know it was crystallized."
Elizabeth does have iconic moments in The Golden Age, such as wearing armor and riding to Tilbury to address the troops resisting the Spanish invasion. But as Blanchett says, "It's a much more internal film…despite the epic backdrop." In weakening Elizabeth, this beautiful film fails to paint a fully heroic queen, a world leader who like Winston Churchill saves England at its darkest hour.
Distributor: Universal
Release: October 12th (wide)
Rating: PG-13 for violence, some sexuality and nudity
Running Time: 1 hr. 54 min.
http://www.elizabeththegoldenage.net/