Anonymous (spoilers)

[Sci]

Steve Mollmann wrote:

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Oh, awesome! I took ENG 201 with Dr. Syme back in the day, during his first semester ever as a professor. He seems to have done well for himself.

Awesome!

[Deckerd]

I don't see what al the fuss is about. The movie industry crushes history beneath the wheels of its chariot on a regular basis. Better to ask how many accurate representations of events have ever been made.

[Daneel]

Yeah, I tend to think that Shakespeare wrote the plays attributed to him, but the "theory" that this film presents didn't anger me or anything. I just took it as a "what if", as I would any work of fiction.

This is certainly a different sort of genre for Emmerich, although the film itself still suffers from his usual excesses. The plot was a bit convoluted, and the audience isn't really given enough time to get to know the characters in order to develop a vested interest in the proceedings. It's just a little too much "this happens, and then BAM, that happens, then BAM, this happens too", etc. It certainly doesn't help that few of the characters are likeable (particularly the more famous ones, like Shakespeare himself, or Queen Elizabeth).

I will give the actors credit, though, for doing a pretty damn good job with what they had to work with (particularly Rhys Ifans as Edward de Vere). Another plus is that the film looks pretty good -- it's a visually interesting picture, if nothing else. Also, I will admit I didn't see that rather sick twist at the end coming (the one that Allyn Gibson mentions... yes, it is actually a final act reveal). I did find that part somewhat effective.

In the end, Anonymous is a meagerly entertaining, if highly preposterous, costume drama, but it doesn't really rise above that too much. It's nice to see Emmerich going outside of his comfort zone a bit, and while this is probably his best film in quite a while, he still failed to truly hit it out of the park.

I will be generous and give it a grade of average.

[Allyn Gibson]

The screenwriter addresses some of his thoughts on the film in an interview with The Atlantic. He defends its history in an interesting way:

We sort of intentionally had this moment of realization as we were working on the script that we were writing a Shakespeare play, or more accurately an Elizabethan play in the sense that we had a large cast of characters [and] we were dealing with Shakespeare's own themes: an unknown prince not getting his throne, betrayal, incest, power, who will be the next king. All of those things are in Shakespeare's plays, and they're in our film as well.

[Temis the Vorta]

This sounds like it could be a hilarious & entertaining rental.

[Gojira]

This movie is bombing at the box office!!!!

It has made only 3.7 million domestic and 2.9 million foreign!!

That is real bad. I actually do like much of his work...even though it is escapist stuff...but this is really bad,.

I was going to wait until the DVD to see this and at this rate it won't be long.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=anonymous.htm

[Sci]

Space Therapist wrote:

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This movie is bombing at the box office!!!!

Good riddance.

[Spot's Meow]

It's no wonder it's doing so badly at the box office, it has horrible advertising. I only heard of the movie two days ago, and since then I've asked my friends/family about it and none of them have heard of it either. It actually sounds interesting to me, I might go see it.

[Rageforthemachine]

Just came back from seeing it. I too hadn't heard of the movie before tonight and was rather surprised who the director was after reading the subject matter of the movie. All in all a pretty entertaining and moving film. It is a little rough going at first, it takes a while to sort out who is who and where the plot is going, and even what time period you are in. It ties together nicely at the end though. Some fine acting performances including the understated Hogg as Cecil. and the overstated Spall as Shakespeare.

As for the contrahvosee, being some one who believes it is very probable that Billy Shakespeare did not write those plays, well I would say it hardly matters. If you want an in-depth examination of the issue read a book. If you want historical drama go see a movie. Movies are there to entertain not to teach us history. Sure the film has a lot of historical inaccuracies(including one pointed out by my girlfriend that will probably go unnoticed by 99.9% of the world, that the shade of blue used to paint the Globe theater was too rare a commodity at the time to be used like that). But as Deckerd said what else is new. Even generally loved films like Amadeus(my personal favorite) have been trashed by historians for its creative historicity.

It is not really surprising that most of the negative reviews out there seem to be reviewing Emmerich and not the film itself. Ironic on the one hand because the film actually lacks the over-the-top bombast of many of films and is much more measured in its actions. Ironic on the other hand that the film is an interesting parallel to the authorship controversy in the first place that so often people interpret the world on what they "just know" rather than on what they do know.

[CaptainCanada]

Rageforthemachine wrote:

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Even generally loved films like Amadeus(my personal favorite) have been trashed by historians for its creative historicity.

The issue is that no one associated with Amadeus has ever claimed they're presenting the true story of Mozart and Salieri.

[Gojira]

Besides my degree in psychotherapy I also have an advanced degree in European history so I love historical films. They visually bring time periods I like to life. However, I always view them as works of fiction!

[Allyn Gibson]

I picked the DVD of this up on Tuesday, and I watched about half of it last night. (I didn't watch it all because I was nodding off, not because of the movie, but because work this week has kicked my ass.)

It's gorgeous to look at. In terms of style, it feels like an episode of The Tudors. (I'll leave it to you to decide whether that's a good thing or not. For me, it is.) In terms of narrative, it's a completely mental Shakespearean play. It starts out with Derek Jacobi as the Narrator setting the stage (like in some of Shakespeare's work), and then it segues into a typically Shakespearean drama, with politics and royal courts and Machiavellian dealings in the background. (The characterization of William Cecil as an Iago-like figure lurking in the background of Elizabethan politics is fascinating, if a bit inaccurate.) But the film has some obvious historical problems, like the idea that Elizabeth went to bed with almost anyone.

When I can devote my full attentions to it this weekend, I'm looking forward to finishing the film. What I've watched of it is quite good, even if the history is a bit mad!