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.
