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The Golden Age
SAI81 from from Tonbridge,
6th November, 2007
1585. Elizabeth (Blanchett) has been Queen of England for nearly 30 years but there remain threats to her throne, mostly from King Philip of Spain (Molla) who is raising a fleet to attack England and remove its 'heretical' Queen. From within there is a threat in the guise of a plot involving Elizabeth's cousin Mary Stuart (Morton) and at court there is intrigue as explorer Walter Raleigh (Owen) returns from the new world and makes a big impression on both the Queen and Bess Throckmorton, her favourite lady-in-waiting (Cornish). The original Elizabeth set a relatively high watermark for this sequel to meet but with most of the talent returning and some quality new recruits it shouldn't have been tough, there's even room for improvement on the first film. The Golden Age, sadly, is a decidedly less interesting film than its predecessor. Much of the problem is structural. While Elizabeth had a traditional thriller structure, focused tightly in on a single plot, The Golden Age tries to do too much. The Mary Queen of Scots plot fills time before the Spanish Armada is ready, but little is achieved by its inclusion, mainly because Samantha Morton's Mary has barely 10 minutes of screen time and so her motives are unknowable and it's hard to connect. The Walter Raleigh story is dull and neither the relationship between Owen and Blanchett, nor that between Owen and Cornish generate much heat, it also leads to the film's nadir, in which Elizabeth throws what can only be described as a hissy fit on finding out that Raleigh and Bess are involved. The Armada arrives late in the game and the battle, which surely should have been the centrepiece of the last act of the film, is dealt with in very short order and little sense of the importance of the victory. The cast are a distinctly mixed bag. Geoffrey Rush returns from the first film as Walsingham and while he's excellent his role is much less interesting and not so dark this time out. It's also hard to figure out why Walsingham is in the film, there's little he does here that has any great effect on events. Clive Owen gives his usual performance as Raleigh, which is to say that he seems just to have woken up to deliver his lines in an emotionless monotone (with, this time, a globetrotting accent which goes from England, to Ireland to America and back several times a sentence). This hurts the film massively because it's hard to see how this man captures the attention of Elizabeth or Bess. As Bess Abbie Cornish is defeated by her monumentally terrible British accent, which she seems to abandon midway through takes for her native Aussie sound. It sticks out like a sore thumb and makes whatever other work she does go unnoticed. There are good performances from Samantha Morton and from Rhys Ifans (essentially taking over Daniel Craig's role from the first film) but neither gets enough screen time to make a great impression. There is, however, a nice line in malevolence from Jordi Molla as Philip of Spain. Once again Cate Blanchett towers over the movie , indeed this time out she single-handedly lifts it above mundanity. Right from the first time I saw the trailer I knew Blanchett would be electrifying, if only from the exchange between the Spanish ambassdor and Elizabeth wherein he threatens “There is a wind coming that will sweep away your pride” only to have Elizabeth bellow back “I too can command the winds Sir, I have a hurricane in me that will strip Spain bare if you dare toy try me”. It's a great line, one of the best of the year and brilliantly delivered in a moment to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand to attention. In another dead on performance only the aforementioned hissy fit comes off badly, but that's hardly Blanchett's fault as she's fighting there against some truly abysmal writing. If there is a larger problem with Blanchett's turn as Elizabeth it is that at the time the film is set the monarch was 52 years old while the radiantly beautiful 37 year old Blanchett looks a good 2 decades more youthful. On the plus side Shekhar Kapur still exhibits a fantastic visual sense and knows how to find shots and moments that will stay in the memory (a silhouetted Philip inspecting his fleet being built, Elizabeth alone in her chambers in full armour) and he's stopped leaning so heavily on his ceiling shots. It's a gorgeous film, one that will probably attract a deserved nomination for cinematography at next years Oscars. Kapur does, however, still use his soundtrack as a crutch, this is particularly irritating during the montage surrounding Mary Queen of Scots execution; I'd much rather have heard what she said to the executioner than the blaring music. When The Golden Age works it is stunning but because of a rambling, unfocused screenplay and several poor performances it works only sporadically and it is left to the ever amazing Cate Blanchett to hold things together.
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