My Very Own Blogetary (Blog: Web Log; etary or ary: engaged in or pertaining to)

About a week and a half ago when I was wondering what I was going to do with the rest of my life, a friend called and invited me to go see Elizabeth: The Golden Age with he and a couple other friends. Since I’d seen Elizabeth: The Virgin Queen back when it came out, and had grown up basically hero worshipping Elizabeth I (as far as I was concerned, she was right up there with Marie Curie, Joan of Arc, Elizabeth Blackwell, Florence Nightingale and Edith Cavell, as well as Ruth, Deborah, and Esther - yes, I am a feminist from WAY back), I was so there. Besides, they were paying, and with my new way of life, that was perfect.

For people not familiar with the historic record, Elizabeth was one of the children of Henry VIII. Her mother was King Henry’s second wife, Anne Boleyn, who was beheaded supposedly for incest, treason, and adultery, but has since been lauded as a great worker for Church Reform and was considered a Protestant martyr by John Foxe. King Henry’s reign, as is typical with most administrations, was full of a struggle for power. He separated England from the Catholic Church so he could divorce his first wife when she didn’t give him the power or the son he desired. Subsequent wives of Henry fell rapidly after that. The result of his dissolution from the Catholic Church was to make the Monarch of England head of the Church of England, or the Anglican Church. The result of his six marriages was to have a handful of children left when he died, ending up in yet more struggles for power.

In Elizabeth: Virgin Queen (EVQ), Shekhar Kapur, Michael Hirst, and Cate Blanchett presented Elizabeth as a bright and lively young woman who was wise enough to seek solace in prayer (at least on the surface - in reality when a woman was at prayer it was one of the only times when she was allowed to sit alone and think without interference) when imprisoned by her half-sister Queen Mary during Mary’s bloody Catholic reign. Elizabeth had grown up watching people she thought of as family either dying or being executed. Family was NOT safe and the people she would naturally be drawn to love were constantly being torn from her. Some movies and books have presented Elizabeth as Henry’s favorite to succeed him to the throne, even though she was female. It would have been a tumultuous upbringing.

In any case, EVQ depicts the first part of Elizabeth’s reign, showing how she learned the hard way the decisions a monarch must make to rule her people well and remain in power. She learned that falling in love, getting married, having children, may not be able to be a part of the equation, no matter what she wanted. There were too many men who seemed trustworthy but were not that were willing to take advantage of her should she show weakness around them. By the end of the movie she realizes that in order to be the ruler she needs to be, her best course of action is to marry her nation. As official head of the Church of England, this is a logical step. Just as the Pope heads the Catholic Church and the Pope and Virgin Mary hear the prayers of the Catholics, she heads the Anglican Church and has become the Virgin Queen, and is there to serve her people.

When Elizabeth: The Golden Age (EGA) opens, Elizabeth has become known for being a just ruler to her people. Papists (Catholics) are not sought out and executed as Protestants had been during Mary’s reign (more of a “don’t ask don’t tell” thing), they do have to be careful though or be accused of treason against the crown. The people of England have grown accustomed to their Virgin Queen, though her adviser believes it would be safer if she were to marry and have an heir and her hand in marriage (as well as her royal favor) is constantly being sought by other European rulers.

Kapur, Hirst, and Blanchett do well in continuing the story begun in EVQ. Elizabeth is shown either attending to matters at court, in prayer, or laughing with her Ladies in Waiting, specifically her favorite, Bess, or Elizabeth Throckmorton (later Raleigh). They are constantly seen in well lit areas and in the best lighting. Bess, as Elizabeth’s mouthpiece, is typically shown in gowns of a similar shade and cut of Elizabeth Tudor’s.

Mary Stuart, cousin to Elizabeth and known as “Queen of Scots,” has been imprisoned in Scotland with her own Ladies of the Privy Chamber. Hirst and Kapur do a good job of showing her as the foil to Elizabeth. Her coloring is darker, though her hair is also a shade red. Yet, the home she lives in is darker. The clothes she and her ladies wear are darker and more somber. There is no laughter in the privy court of the Queen of Scots. While the Queen of Scots has been married many times and had affairs, she, as a fellow Catholic, is supported by the Catholic ruler of Spain. Elizabeth, however, is known as the Virgin Queen and (outwardly anyway) lives a chaste life, yet in some circles of those who would have her deposed she is called a whore and a bastard, daughter of the devil.

Kapur and Hirst have set up this tension between Catholic and Protestant and show how it even tears up the nation within immediate families, as with any civil religious war. Bess turns her back on her cousin, Walsingham imprisons his brother, Elizabeth I was imprisoned by her sister and has imprisoned her own cousin.

Elizabeth also struggles with her desires for adventure versus the need to protect her country against the Spanish Armada and once again must relearn that while she may desire a mate and children, her mate and her children will always be the people and nation of England. This is where England begins to come into its own as an island sea power, as well as entering a new era of peace full of scientific and artistic accomplishments.

Much as medieval church builders and architects did before literacy became more prevalent (and during the Elizabethan era is when literacy began to become more common), the movie depends on visual symbolism to tell its story. The colors are rich, the music is beautiful, and because 2 hours is not enough time to cover all the important aspects of Elizabeth I’s reign, much depends on nuance and on showing scenes which may not have been documented, but were probably true in spirit.

One of my favorite scenes is when Elizabeth must sentence Mary Stuart to death because of her treason. I believe it’s documented that she did not want to do this. She believed her family had already experienced too much bloodshed. To behead a queen was to behead herself, her mother, and other women she had known and loved. But as a ruler of a nation it was something she had to do to keep order and retain her power.

Did Elizabeth virtually throw Bess and Walter Raleigh together so she could live vicariously through them, only to exile and imprison them later because of feelings of jealousy and betrayal? The records show the exile and imprisonment, but only those people involved truly know what went on between them. And while the movie shows Elizabeth coming to terms with Bess and Walter’s marriage, history records a continued estrangement and Walter’s eventual execution in 1618 (a time period after the close of the movie).

Elizabeth may have, indeed, dressed in armor as a Valkyrie or Joan of Arc, riding before her troupes to rouse them as the marched to war with the Spanish. Was that scene hauntingly familiar because Kapur seemed to borrow it from Lord of the Rings? Or is it familiar because it IS the original and Tolkien and/or Jackson borrowed it from history to put into The Lord of the Rings. Whatever the case may be, it was a good scene.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age, may or may not be completely historically accurate. There was a mini-series put out by PBS (Elizabeth R) in 1971 with Glenda Jackson as well as one from 2005 where Helen Mirren plays Elizabeth I. Each in its own way may be more accurate than this movie. But it is a common truism that writers lie in order to tell the truth. Sometimes a writer has to change or alter a historical fact in order to present a tale that is emotionally closer to the truth. I believe in many ways, despite some of the short comings, Elizabeth: The Golden Age came closer to portraying the truth of this woman, this ruler, than many other portrayals have.

At the end of the movie one of the women in the audience pumped the air with her fists yelling “Way to go, sister!” I was crying too hard to give that woman a yell in solidarity, but my heart was with her.