you regularly hear on
ER
, all of whom act as if they were in a
Tudor version of
The Godfather
– is to turn high drama into
high kitsch.
Director Kapur’s florid, melodramatic visual style only
makes bad matters worse. Kapur dotes on short, punchy,
M T V-like takes, in which he typically ratchets up the fore-
boding (the one effect he seems to have mastered) by shoot-
ing in very low light from lots of quick, “arty” angles. He
loves setting his actors in frantic, pointless motion and then
tracking them restlessly down dark, column-lined corridors.
He is also far too fond of crosscutting, in hackneyed fash-
ion, between pretty sunlit or candlelit idylls and ominous
shots of horses galloping across moors or armed men strid-
ing dark castle halls. When this whole calliope of clichés is
set to David Hirschfelder’s dreadful, pounding, prophetic
score, the saga of Elizabeth’s transformation from princess
to Virgin Queen is turned into Gothic camp.
The Castle of
Otranto 90210.
Although the producers of
Elizabeth
went to great
extent to film in authentic locations (as if keeping faith
with the past were simply a matter of keeping up appear-
ances), their true intentions are clear from the start. The
movie has been written, shot, and cut strictly for the high-
adrenaline, short-attention-span Gen-X market. There are
flashes of romping-through-the-fields romance and dirty
dancing for the girls; dusky romps in the hay and violent
revenge for the guys; and a cast that was clearly selected,
coifed, and costumed with an eye to what would appeal to
young viewers of each sex. Polygram ordered the old girl
and her courtiers to lively up themselves – and figured
they’d ordered up a hit.
A hit the movie was, although not, as you can tell, in the
Valin household. Cate Blanchett, who is perhaps the only rea -
son to sit through this kitschy claptrap, looks great and acts
well in a tough part, but even she goes over-the-top on occa-
sion. (Take a look at the scene in which she is forced by Cecil
to accept the Duke of Anjou as a suitor, while simultaneously
trying to deal with her jealous lover, Robert Dudley [1:9, c. 50
minutes]. Blanchett flies about, with Kapur’s camera doing its
usual ring-around-the-rosy, twisting her hands and screwing
up her face like a bad actress in a bad silent film.)
E l i z a b e t h
is a very good-looking transfer, with a powerful
Dolby Digital soundtrack and a lot of thunderous low bass – for
what those things are worth, which isn’t much, in my opinion.
* * *
If
Elizabeth
turned out to be a major disappointment,
Mrs.
Brown
, another film about another great English monarch,
turned out to be a surprising success.
Unlike Shekhur Kapur, director John Madden is a pro with
a straightforward, serviceable visual style that never gets in
the way of the storytelling. As a filmmaker, he has the virtues
of modesty, faith in his actors, and good taste in scripts.
(
Shakespeare in Love
was his next project.) All of which
means that
Mrs. Brown
, which starts from a far less promis-
ing (and sexy) premise than
Elizabeth
, holds you for almost
its entire length by the power of its plot-line and the pleasure
of its performances.
As I said, the premise is not promising, though more accu-
rate historically than anything in
Elizabeth
. After the death of
her beloved consort, Prince Albert, Queen Victoria sank into
a years-long depression. While she sat in Windsor and
mourned, her country was left virtually without a monarch,
giving the crown’s enemies in the House of Com-
mons, Gladstone and the Liberals, room to maneu-
ver and giving her son, Albert, the opportunity to
promote his own regency.
In an attempt to revive her spirits and head off
a constitutional crisis, some of the Queen’s advisors decided to
call on John Brown, a Master of Horse at Balmoral Castle in
Scotland, whom Prince Albert had greatly admired and who
had once saved the Queen’s life after a carriage accident. The
thought was that the rugged, affable Brown could entice Vi c t o-
ria to go riding – and that once out-of-doors, out of Wi n d s o r
Castle, her depression might begin to lift and her mourning end.
What none of the Queen’s counselors realized was that
Brown was an extremely independent and headstrong Scot,
with his own firm ideas about how to raise the Queen’s spirits
– and with an absolute devotion to her person. Beginning with
their daily rides, he gradually won Victoria’s trust – and, to
everyone else’s horror, her heart. Before long, he was the
most powerful man in court – able to persuade Victoria to
move her royal family and retinue to Balmoral, in the High-
lands, able to control the Queen’s daily regimen and official
schedule, able to head off her son, Albert, whom he treated
with utter disrespect.
The court and Commons began to gossip about Brown and
“Mrs. Brown,” raising the possibility of a monarchy-wrecking
scandal and leading the Queen’s Prime Minister Benjamin Dis-
raeli (Antony Sher, in a marvelously arch and supple perfor-
mance) to visit Balmoral and try to negotiate with Brown the
return of the Queen to London – and the public eye.
Nothing sensationally dramatic occurs in the course of
Mrs. Brown
– certainly nothing like the bloody intrigues and
hot liaisons of
E l i z a b e t h
. Queen Victoria and John Brown
d o n ’t even share a kiss. And yet the love that grows between
them – and the way that love transforms the Queen, giving
her the strength to carry on – is enough to keep us highly
entertained.
Although Billy Connolly does a superior job as burly John
Brown, the faithful servant, his performance grows a bit one-
note as he bangs against the limits of the belligerent Scot’s
foursquare character. One gets a bit weary of hearing
Brown/Connolly bray things like, “Woman, why y’no listen to
me?” in that booming brogue. On the other hand, Judi Dench’s
Victoria, which is acted within an even narrower expressive
compass than Connolly’s Brown, is a thing to marvel at.
Given Vi c t o r i a ’s infamous sense of propriety, Dench has to
express the Queen’s love for Brown primarily by indirection –
rather than through words or deeds. The glint of her smile, the
subtle movements of her eyes or hands become barometers of
what her character is thinking and feeling. That a performer
can make such gestures consistently expressive of complex
and shifting emotional states – without hammering them too
hard, without going over-the-top – is acting of the highest order.
In its modesty and restraint,
Mrs. Brown
may well be the
ultimate Victorian love story, but that does not keep it from
being a moving one – or keep Dench from giving the best per-
formance of 1997.
* * *
For the best performance of 1998, you’ll have to turn to anoth-
er type of British royal – expatriate film director James Whale,
whose life and death are the subjects of Bill Condon’s deeply
affecting biopic,
Gods and Monsters
.
Whale made his reputation in Thirties Hollywood, direct-
