Before She Was a Virgin: The New Elizabeth

Power not only corrupts, but it fascinates--absolutely. Consider the cult of the biography, the aura of the Kennedy Camelot myth and the endless tabloid intrigues of the British royals. From Shakespeare to Lewinsky, Napoleon to The Godfather, few things are as enthralling as the machinations of power: trying to seize it, trying to keep it, losing yourself in it. In its best moments, Shekhar Kapur's new biopic Elizabeth fascinates with the gleam and glamour of the very, very powerful. Though its Elizabethan Godfather pulp style strains the limits of historical revisionism, the spectacle of young Elizabeth's entrance into imperial power has its undeniable pleasures.

Elizabeth imagines an England in anarchy, wracked with an embroiling religious conflict between Protestantism and Catholicism. The Pope and his political counterparts in France and Spain are menacing the country, while the Catholic "Bloody" Queen Mary's public burnings of Protestants (presented in lurid excess in the opening of the film) only intensify the conflict. Into the middle of this maelstrom, Kapur places Elizabeth: young, innocent, with flowing hair and a penchant for dancing the volta. There may be something tenacious and unreadable in Cate Blanchett's Elizabeth, but Kapur doesn't help much, filming the young royal in pastel gowns with a bevy of handmaidens and a robust beau, prancing giddily in some absurdly verdant corner of the English countryside. This is the Virgin Queen before she was a virgin (to quote the preeminent Elizabethan scholar Groucho Marx)--and if this preposterous rapture is the best the film can do, one can't help but long for more chiaroscuro conspiracies and bloody assassinations.

And that's exactly the problem with Elizabeth. When the film thrusts the young thing into a den of wolves as savage and wily as the Mafia barons of The Godfather or the Japanese businessmen of Rising Sun, it wrings its hands somewhat too emphatically at Elizabeth's shrewd, momentous steps to transfigure herself into an emblem to lead her country. If Elizabeth's mutation into the Virgin Queen is the death of her womanhood, and happiness, as the film asserts, her sexuality--that which she renounces to rule the nation--ought to seem a little more respectable.

Tellingly, the most consistently exciting character in the film is not Elizabeth herself but her shadowy advisor Sir Francis Walsingham, played with relish and cold blood by the virtuosic Geoffrey Rush. Other politicos surrounding the Queen, like unrecognizable Christopher Eccleston as the traitorous Duke of Norfolk and Santa Claus-lookalike Richard Attenborough as earnest advisor Sir William Cecil, reveal their allegiances too broadly to become truly fearful or fascinating. By contrast, Rush's lurking performance leaves everything to the imagination: Walsingham whispers sweet Machiavellian nothings in the ear of the Queen between sessions slitting the throats of the boys he buggers.

Only in one masterful sequence at the center of the film, when Kapur pulls back the curtain on Elizabeth, rehearsing a momentous address to the bishops of England, does the Queen herself take center stage as a feminist vision of powerful womanhood--using intelligence, humor and finesse to spellbind her subjects with her own authority. For once, the film emerges from the shadow of its most prominent artistic antecedent: The Godfather. In this sequence, we watch as Elizabeth rewrites history, beginning her speech halting and uncertain, and slowly coming into her own as a power broker. This, finally, is a display of the allure of power at its best--Blanchett's charisma becomes palpable, blazing, a force to be reckoned with.

Overall, still, Elizabeth is overshadowed by the context in which she is crowned; she is not so much an active participant in her life as an intelligent spectator of the Baroque scheming that surrounds her. Though this film at times feels like the Corleone saga circa 1551--there is even a sequence late in Elizabeth which cross-cuts between shots of the Queen at prayer and the conspirators against her being assassinated--this capo of England never chooses to become "Godmother." And without Elizabeth's complicity in her own fate, the consquences of her power lack the tragic heft of Pacino's deeds at the end of The Godfather Part II. The china doll face of

Blanchett at the end of the film, martyred tothe state as the Virgin Queen, is not a grandpoignant enigma, but merely the astute resolutionto give the people of England the ruler theydesire.

The real Elizabeth is certainly an enduringmystery: a shrewd political creature who used herambiguous position as a woman to lead her countryinto prominence. If only Elizabeth's choices andactions in the film were more her own, one couldcelebrate the achievements of this remarkablefigure. But instead the film presents Elizabeth'sreign as the results of the actions and failingsof the men around her. She refuses to marry not soshe can better exploit her eligibility as awildcard in international affairs but because herchoices are a sterile marriage of convenience withSpain or shallow wedlock with a Frenchtransvestite. She denounces sex not to reign moreeffectively, but only when her lover is revealedas a married man. Given that the real QueenElizabeth once stated flatly that she "wouldrather be a beggar and single than a queen andmarried," the film's presentation of Elizabeth'saversion not to the institution of marriage butmerely to incompatible mates seems simplyinnaccurate.

For a film which is trying to reach out beyondthe frock film crowd--with war scenes that aretruly bloody, a Byzantine political atmosphere aslurid and conspiratorial as our own and a gleamingfeminist jewel in the center of the spectacle--itsElizabeth is decidedly archaic. Despite theexcellent work of Cate Blanchett, who resemblesthe real Queen Elizabeth to an astonishing degree,her character is seldom as active, charismatic andcomplex as the historical queen must have been.Perhaps if the film's plotting were lessconvoluted, perhaps if Blanchett's Elizabeth weremore appealing, perhaps if we saw Elizabethstruggle more with her own sovereignty, the filmmight truly give us a queen to be reckoned with.Instead, we have something prettily filmed, and alot less captivating

Blanchett at the end of the film, martyred tothe state as the Virgin Queen, is not a grandpoignant enigma, but merely the astute resolutionto give the people of England the ruler theydesire.

The real Elizabeth is certainly an enduringmystery: a shrewd political creature who used herambiguous position as a woman to lead her countryinto prominence. If only Elizabeth's choices andactions in the film were more her own, one couldcelebrate the achievements of this remarkablefigure. But instead the film presents Elizabeth'sreign as the results of the actions and failingsof the men around her. She refuses to marry not soshe can better exploit her eligibility as awildcard in international affairs but because herchoices are a sterile marriage of convenience withSpain or shallow wedlock with a Frenchtransvestite. She denounces sex not to reign moreeffectively, but only when her lover is revealedas a married man. Given that the real QueenElizabeth once stated flatly that she "wouldrather be a beggar and single than a queen andmarried," the film's presentation of Elizabeth'saversion not to the institution of marriage butmerely to incompatible mates seems simplyinnaccurate.

For a film which is trying to reach out beyondthe frock film crowd--with war scenes that aretruly bloody, a Byzantine political atmosphere aslurid and conspiratorial as our own and a gleamingfeminist jewel in the center of the spectacle--itsElizabeth is decidedly archaic. Despite theexcellent work of Cate Blanchett, who resemblesthe real Queen Elizabeth to an astonishing degree,her character is seldom as active, charismatic andcomplex as the historical queen must have been.Perhaps if the film's plotting were lessconvoluted, perhaps if Blanchett's Elizabeth weremore appealing, perhaps if we saw Elizabethstruggle more with her own sovereignty, the filmmight truly give us a queen to be reckoned with.Instead, we have something prettily filmed, and alot less captivating