Elizabeth

The first years of the young Elizabeth on the throne: Catholic plots, pressure to marry, and the intelligence network Walsingham builds. The film proceeds less as a struggle for a throne than as a woman turning herself into an image. Shekhar Kapur directed, and an Indian filmmaker taking on English history was one of the most discussed things about it. The result looks markedly different from the usual period picture. It was the turning point for Cate Blanchett. At the 71st Academy Awards the film took seven nominations including Best Picture and Best Actress and won only for makeup. Blanchett won the Golden Globe for Best Actress and the film took five BAFTAs including Outstanding British Film. On a 30 million dollar budget it grossed 82 million worldwide. Historians went after it. One critic wrote that it treated the known facts of the reign, plus many hitherto unknown, as if they had been shaken up like jigsaw pieces and scattered at random. The main objection was to Elizabeth being shown as weak and overly dependent on male advisers, against a record describing her as decisive and intelligent. The Catholic League accused it of anti-Catholicism. Who it is for: viewers who want the period film in a different visual language. Who it is not for: anyone expecting fidelity to history. The objections hold and the film makes no attempt to answer them.