Anonymous
starring Rhys Ifans, Vanessa Redgrave, Joely Richardson, David Thewlis, Xavier Samuel, Sebastian Armesto, Rafe Spall, Edward Hogg, Jamie Campbell Bower, Mark Rylance, Trystan Gravelle and Derek Jacobi
written by John Orloff
directed by Roland Emmerich
Rating: ♦♦◊◊◊
I knew about this 2011 film a long time ago, but I forgot about it before I had a chance to see it. I recently re-discovered it when I came across a list on the internet of the most historically inaccurate films of all time. There are a lot of those on the long list. As for films about William Shakespeare, I really enjoyed the 1998 film Shakespeare in Love (directed by John Madden and starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Joseph Fiennes) even though that film was on the same list of notoriously historically inaccurate films as Anonymous. I guess I like Shakespeare in Love because of its cleverness and humor. I didn’t feel that Anonymous had any of that. I mean, the film took itself too seriously.
Although he has appeared in over 60 films so far in his career, this is only the third film I’ve seen featuring Welsh actor Rhys Ifans. He’s a weird looking guy and a weird sounding guy. I’ve liked him two out of three times. I like him in this film. His performance is strong, and a fine cast did a good job bringing the story to life even though the premise of the film is an insult to intelligent minds.
The premise of Anonymous is the Oxford debate - the proposition that William Shakespeare did not really write his plays and poems, but that they were written by a more educated aristocrat (Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford) who used Shakespeare as a front, a foil to pass off oblique political messages and direct suspicion away from himself. The Oxfordian position relies on variously ignoring, diminishing and dismissing the established historical facts - the facts we know about the man Shakespeare - to insist (erroneously, I think) that a man from provincial Stratford-Upon-Avon could not possibly have had either the education or the life experience to write the plays attributed to him; that only an aristocrat could have those. In this case, Shakespeare (played by Rafe Spall, son of Timothy Spall) is portrayed as a conniving, malicious, no-talent, barely literate drunken fool.
It was ridiculous. It was rubbish. But it was interesting, not dull.
Period movies of recent years featuring Queen Elizabeth I that I have seen - Anonymous, Shakespeare in Love, Elizabeth (1998), The Golden Age (2007), Elizabeth I (2005) - inescapably deal with the politics of the time in addition to the sexuality of the woman. The political issues feature the Protestant queen fending off repeated continental Catholic challenges to her reign; navigating competing factions within her own kingdom - English Catholics who wanted to overthrow her; Puritan counselors who wanted her to marry and produce an heir; and, ministers struggling to keep her government financially solvent. The sexual issues feature common rumors pinned to her about affairs and illegitimate children going as far back as her teen years. The existence of illegitimate children complicated the succession issue. Late in life (she died aged 69 in 1603) she was ailing and childless, and being advised to appoint an heir. The heir eventually became King James VI of Scotland, son of Elizabeth’s old enemy (and cousin) Queen Mary whom she had executed in 1587, age 44, who became King James I of England upon his ascension.
Anonymous is ripe with interesting Hollywood writers’ conspiracy and a bit short on the historical truth.