Friday, October 28, 2011
Review 'Anonymous' merrily drags The Bard through the dirt
Posted by Curt Holman @Curt_Holman on Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 11:56 AM
- Columbia Pictures
- THE WALLS HAVE EARS: Rhys Ifans (right) as Edward de Vere
Possibly Emmerich wanted to tap the popularity of cultural conspiracy theories like The Da Vinci Code by digging up 400 year-old gossip about English royalty and canonical writers. Anonymous’s convoluted presentation of Elizabethan history makes a poor case that Edward de Vere (Rhys Ifans), the 17th Earl of Oxford, actually wrote the poetry and plays attributed to boozing, inarticulate ham actor Will Shakespeare (Rafe Spall).
A mid-film montage suggests Emmerich’s attachment to the unlikely material. “Shakespeare’s” plays bring boffo box office for London’s unwashed audiences, and we see the groundlings rejoice over Henry V’s St. Crispin’s Day speech, the ladies swoon over Romeo like it’s a Justin Bieber concert. Shakespeare even crowd-surfs over the adoring masses. Anonymous not only asserts the plays as the greatest in the English language, but their appeal as popular entertainments. It’s not a stretch to imagine that Emmerich sees himself as a 21st century purveyor of what the people want. The difference is that Emmerich films like Godzilla and 10,000 B.C. compare more closely to the era’s bear vs. dog fights than Hamlet.
Anonymous deserves an ounce of credit for bringing a little literary appreciation to the multiplex, and it’s a shame that John Orloff’s film strays from the comedic model of Shakespeare in Love. Instead, Anonymous contorts itself into spaghetti-like knots to connect Edward de Vere’s biography to theatrical culture and political intrigue at the turn of the 17th century, with an impossible muddled flashback structure. It turns out that young Edward (Jamie Campbell Bower) romanced Queen Elizabeth (an ardent Joely Richardson) as a comely cougar, but in the film’s present, Edward tries to thwart the sinister influence of Robert Cecil (Edward Hogg) on the dotty monarch (Joely’s real-life mother Vanessa Redgrave). Anonymous needs pop-up factoids to sort out the various royal bastards and arrests of playwright Ben Jonson (Sebastian Armesto).
The films toys with a fascinating but half-baked notion about the power of entertainment to manipulate audience emotions, and at one point the opening soliloquy of Richard III turns the Globe-goers into an angry mob. Anonymous’ factual inaccuracies undermine its case that Shakespeare, derisively called “The Stratford Man” by literary conspiracy theorists, wasn’t the plays’ true author. In Anonymous, the debut of Richard III coincides with the Essex Rebellion in 1601, even though the play was probably written a decade earlier, and was definitely registered in 1597.
Of course, Amadeus played fast and loose with the historical record and still delivered a lively take on Mozart’s life and the eternal tension between artistic genius and popular mediocrity. Anonymous instead operates on the level of salacious trash. Filled with sneering courtiers in doublets and flamboyant facial hair, Anonymous frequently resembles Rowan Atkinson’s Blackadder II, only without the punchlines. Somewhere in all the muddy streets, hedge mazes and palace corridors, Ifans gives a movingly melancholy performance as a true artist imprisoned by his noble station.
For a film about authorial authenticity, Anonymous shamelessly steals the framing device of Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V: in both, Shakespearean legend Derek Jacobi addresses modern audiences before segueing into the historical text. If Anonymous inspires moviegoers to seek out Branagh’s film, it’ll be worth it. Otherwise, the film’s most likely future lies as a drinking game for English Lit majors.
Anonymous. 2 stars. Directed by Roland Emmerich. Stars Rhys Ifans, Rafe Spall. Rated PG-13. Opens Fri., Oct. 28. At area theaters.
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