Pop Smart - DVD Review: Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Last fall, critics pretty much jeered at Elizabeth: The Golden Age, director Shekhar Kapur’s who-asked-for-it? sequel to 1998’s Elizabeth. Following Cate Blanchett’s surprise Best Actress nomination for this year’s Academy Awards, the Feb. 5 DVD release of Elizabeth: The Golden Age invites a look by viewers scared away from the theatrical release.
It’s not like the original Elizabeth was a great film, with its lurid violence, murky interiors and even more inscrutable plotting. It was, however, a great showcase for then-29-year-old Blanchett, who portrayed the political rise (and personal disappointments) of Elizabeth I with the charisma and versatility of a Golden Age movie star, as well as some of the internalized acting of a contemporary method actor. In an era when so many name-above-the-title screen stars seem like overgrown teenagers, Blanchett came across as an exception, youthful but mature.
It’s hard to blame Blanchett for wanting to return to as juicy a role as Elizabeth I. The same year she was nominated for Elizabeth, Judi Dench won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her brief appearance as an older Elizabeth in Shakespeare in Love. Incidentally, in 2003 Atlanta’s Jessica Phelps West offered a superb, regal performance of the queen in Theatre in the Square’s Mary Stuart, a play that covers some of the same ground as The Golden Age, while having about 10 times more wisdom.
Blanchett carries herself as every inch the queen in The Golden Age, teasing with her ladies-in-waiting, flirting with the preposterously hunky Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen, bursting out of various puffy shirts) and challenging snide Spanish ambassadors. Blanchett even manages to look beautiful and dignified in a film with some of the most outlandish costumes and makeup since The Fifth Element. (Not surprisingly, The Golden Age also picked up a Best Costume Design nomination.) Perhaps Shakur’s historical insights reach no further than providing a character study of the Virgin Queen, since the dialogue rings more true (or at least less false) in the scenes with Blanchett, who sympathetically conveys the queen’s powers and her limitations.