Many
films have been made about Queen Elizabeth. Our images have
perhaps already been shaped by the portrayal of Bette Davis,
who made the queen out to be almost a tough Lesbian. Along
comes sensitive Cate Blanchett, who shows how an unprepared
not-so-virgin princess achieved maturity as a queen through
bitter experience. In Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth: The
Virgin Queen, which was released in 1998, we find
intrigue and betrayal in which the various interests represented
at the court are selfish, shortsighted, and vain. In the beginning
of the film, the year 1554, Elizabeth is imprisoned, refuses
to renounce Protestantism, but the dying queen mother, a Catholic,
allows her to live. After Elizabeth ascends to the throne
in 1558, she is welcomed as a possible advocate for various
interests at the court and nearly overthrown because of the
rivalries. But the factions at the court are contradictory
and do not have the greater interests of the country at heart.
After her "Bay of Pigs," in which English youth are cannon
fodder in a battle with Scotland, she comes to the realization
that her advisers are treacherous fools. Ultimately, she decides
upon a "Saturday night massacre," in which all her self-centered
advisers are fired. Her awareness that the national interest
must prevail over petty court politics comes slowly but is
firm in the end. Although most biographers believe that she
was fickle in bestowing favors, prejudiced, and vacillating,
we see little of this aspect in the film. The film also reinvents
a history: Mary of Guise died of dropsy, Dudley's marriage
was well known, Walsingham became a significant figure considerably
later in Elizabeth's reign, and Norfolk was not arrested until
1571, as the events have been rearranged for dramatic purposes.
We see that she used contemplation of marriage with the French
and Spanish courts as means for postponing war until England
was strong enough to become a real power in Europe. We leave
the theatre, with a tear or two forming on our cheeks, as
we realize how her idealism and desire for personal (and even
sexual) happiness had to be abandoned for the good of her
country and her own conscience. The best part of the film
is how this personal transformation develops step by step.
We reflect that politicians, including former Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher, whom the film seems to glorify subliminally,
are inevitably caught with the choice of either pandering
to special or personal interests or rising above them. Elizabeth’s
choice of career over family and sensuality is an important
feminist theme of our times but not common in the sixteenth
century, when women were considered unfit to rule. Was Elizabeth
the first feminist? Perhaps so, but the film tells both men
and women what is required for political statesmanship, though
the tagline of the film lectures "Absolute power demands absolute
loyalty," indicating perhaps that those who made the film
should look again at the feminist message disseminated so
eloquently. MH
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