Elizabeth: The Golden Age

Were Michael Curtiz and Errol Flynn alive today, the director Shekar Kapur and the actor Clive Owen in Elizabeth: The Golden Age would have to cede the field. However, faced with the redoubtable Elizabeth of Cate Blanchette ("I have a hurricane  in me"), conceived by the screenwriters William Nicolson and Michael Hirst, Owen wonderfully channels Flynn, putting the dash back in dashing and the smolder in smoldering. Serving as the coda to 1998's Elizabeth, this film surveys the later Elizabethan years, encompassing the increasingly isolated Elizabeth's fascination, through Sir Walter Ralegh, with the New World, the confrontation with Mary, Queen of Scots (an underused Samantha Morton) and the "traitorous" Papists seeking her overthrow.

Mr. Kapur's very active camera sweeps across a sumptuous panorama from court to coastline, from overhead cathedral to underwater sea attack; the costumes nearly become an added character -- extravagant but essential. Elizabeth's golds are as defining as Mary's blacks. (Tom Hollander's performance as the prisoner Mary's keeper is his usual exercise in exceptional restraint.)

The accuracy of all the film's historical facts and insights will have to be left to the historians, though Elizabeth's St. Joan of Arc-ish speech to the troops (sans wig, but with flowing locks?) does inspire questions. But Kapur and his writers have created a world that conjures a credible reality, where Sir Frances Walsingham (Geoffrey Rush, rewardingly returned from Elizabeth) intrigues for his Queen against the underground Catholics (like Rhys Ifans, in hardly more than a cameo, and Adam Godley, as Walsingham's scheming brother), the duplicitous Spanish (led by King Philip II, Jordi Molla), and courtiers set on advancement.

Ms. Blanchette superbly represents the public and private Elizabeth again. She can rail with the best of them, yet cry non-crocodle tears at her sister Mary's death on Elizabeth's order.  Mr. Owen's work is not made easy by Blanchette's reserve as the regal Queen, but as the film advances, there is genuine engagement between the two (if not "chemistry," then at least biology.) The plot points about the Papist conspiracy are occasionally over-murky and hard to follow, but the narrative sweeps forward to the engrossing sea battle with the Armada, exciting even as the result is known.

If fault be found, the film's score more often than not overwhelms with stentorian reverberation--the more beautiful, the more in the way. This is more overscoring than underscoring.

But if historical drama and good film is your game, Mr. Kapur is your coach.

                                                           Howard Buck