The ending to Elizabeth is shocking and brilliantly ambiguous: The queen (Cate Blanchett), who has been so loving and passionate, is now stone cold (with her face colored white), prepared to rule England with icy force. The scene at first feels tragic, with the new Elizabeth, while the film cuts rapidly to flashbacks of the younger Elizabeth. Then, however, we are then told that for the next forty years she ruled and that England had its Golden Age at that time. So, while the imagery is sad, the outcome is good, and the music is so unbearably annoying that it distracts us as to whether the moment is meant to be glorious or tragic. It's quite a scene. The problem is that if you were to take Elizabeth's icy face, drag her jaw downward, have her pupils point upward, and have her head rotate in circular motion, you would have some idea of the way I looked watching this movie up until the final scene. One can easily see, in retrospect, that the film does in fact believe that Elizabeth's transformation was for the best. How else can one explain why director Shekhar Kapur filmed with film in such an icy, impassionate manner? The film is about as sincere as all of those robotic bows to Queen Elizabeth. Kapur is at his best when he tries to make Elizabeth into a thriller, and I do believe that it might have been better if it were a 90-minute horror show about a queen in turmoil. But Kapur eventually gives up on the film's thriller routes and blindly follows the path of all the other epic directors before him (Richard Attenborough is in the movie!). What do big epic filmmakers get out of their careers? Are we really to believe that they have any blood pumping through their veins? How could anyone ever have gotten any joy out of making this movie? If there is one thing that I can say on the film's behalf, it is that Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush, Rich Attenbourough, and Joseph Fiennes all do great Oscar-grubbing-excuse me-acting.
Review of Elizabeth
