I am assured that the people of England love their queen. My constant endeavour is to earn that love.
-
1585
Elizabeth : The Golden Age is vivid and bold, a visual feast full of pomp and circumstance, ornate costumes and brilliant colours and characters - yet a world full of darkness and deadly plots - romances and dalliances and the eternal power play. The follow-up to Elizabeth succeeds admirably as an intrigue of espionage and love, set in and around the royal court. The first movie was about power, this movie is about Absolute Power and Divinity.
Ten years after director Shekhar Kapur's Elizabeth movie which was seen at Toronto Film Festival 1998, Cate Blanchett is back as the Queen - at the age of 52 and the popular defender of her country. Geoffrey Rush returns as Elizabeth's loyal advisor Sir Francis Walsingham working in the background, now older and in ill-health, still ferreting out the schemes and plots against Elizabeth's life and throne, trying to find out the details about "the enterprise."
Kill a Queen and a Queen is mortal
Spain led by the Catholic King Phillip II is the most powerful nation on Earth and has launched Holy War - only England stands alone led by the Protestant Queen Elizabeth - the threat of the Spanish Armada looms on the distant horizon as Spain levels its forests to build a great fleet. Meanwhile, cousin Mary Queen of Scots, played to the seething hilt by Samantha Morton determined in her mindset that she is the usurped Queen, locked away in prison exile with her maids, is conspiring with Philip to return to the English throne. Phillip holds no affection for England or her Queen, calling her a "whore" and a "bastard queen" leading England into hell.
Elizabeth is surrounded by her ladies in waiting, including her favoured, golden-haired Bess/Elizabeth Throckmorton played by the attractive Abbie Cornish [our favourite actress from TIFF back in the days of 2004, Somersault, then A Good Year [2006] and now Elizabeth: The Golden Age]. Elizabeth lives vicariously through Bess who has the figure and the bosom, the looks and the interesting life that the Queen yearns for, but in her position she cannot, she sets the regal example for the country. From the start, Bess shows a less than disinterested glance towards the "handsome" Drake, and Drake is courting Bess to gain the favour of the Queen, as Elizabeth forewarns her. Drake to paraphrase Lady Catherine in Young Bess, "you are not the first man to be in love with two women at the same time."
While England waits for an heir, Elizabeth's virginity and unmarried state is still a source of attraction for foreign suitors who seek marriage and alliances. She at best tolerates all the pomp and circumstance of court, explaining to the German dignitary that "I pretend there's a panel of glass between myself and the people. They can see me but they cannot touch me." A chivalrous and emboldened Francis Drake impresses himself upon the proceedings and banters with the Queen [ while still maintaining cordial respect and love], having returned from his journeys to the New World bearing gifts such as the potato for eating, tobacco for stimulation, native Indians, naming a parcel of land in the New World after the queen, [ and when I am married will it be called Conjulia? And no doubt you will name a city after yourself, she asks pompously ] and Spanish gold. Drake is not popular with the Spanish ambassadors, who call Drake a pirate. Drake in turn says, the more gold he takes from Spain, the better it is for the Queen. Drake as the ever loyal servant of the Queen - with the toothy grin played almost in caricature by Clive Owen who becomes the apple of the eye of Elizabeth. Cate Blanchett effortlessly sinks again into her role as the Virgin Queen - her inner conflicts as a woman balanced with being the dignified ruler of her country. Drake regales a mesmerized Elizabeth with tales of discovering the New World. Drake longs to sail again with her royal warrant back to Virginia, but with the assassination threat swirling about her, the Queen keeps Drake closeby elevating him to Sir and making him the chief of her security. However much she desires him, the relationship is at best hands off, and thus triggers a suiting between Bess and Raleigh. A dangerous triangle ensues between the three - and is delicately negotiated in the movie. In her private mooning for Drake, Elizabeth is almost reduced in character to a simpering woman with a crush, but when she has to defend her country facing the enemy army, and the Armada, she cries out, "By God, England will not fall while I am queen!" Elizabeth comes across as emotional, marching furiously about with her ladies trailing as she a country away waits out the hour of her cousin's execution, and superstitious, asking the tarot card reader John Dee for some measure of hope about the war.
The constraints of the budget reduce the naval scenes with the Armada which took weeks in history to mere minutes on screen - but the historial truth is maintained. By the end, with Spain fallen with the Armada, she elevated once again is the Queen.
"I am the Virgin Queen, I am unmarried, I am powerless to no man, I am the mother of my country. I am Queen. I am myself."
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