Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007)

National Catholic Register ^ | Steven Gredanus

[Frank Sheed]

Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007)

Directed by Shekhar Kapur. Cate Blanchett, Geoffrey Rush, Clive Owen, Abbie Cornish, Samantha Morton, Jordi Mollà.

From a National Catholic Register review

By Steven D. Greydanus

A lurid sort of Christopher Hitchens vision of history pervades Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Shekhar Kapur’s sequel to his 1998 art-house hit Elizabeth.

The earlier film, which made a star of Cate Blanchett as the eponymous Virgin Queen, celebrated the triumph of bright, happy Elizabethan Protestantism over the dark, unwholesome Catholic world of Bloody Mary. Even so, that film’s church-bashing was tame compared that of this sequel, in which everything bad, evil and corrupt in the world ultimately is ultimately the bitter fruit of Religion. And by Religion, I mean Catholicism.

Yes, technically Protestantism might be a form of religious devotion too. But The Golden Age carefully expunges anything like actual belief or religiosity from its minimal portrayal of the faith affiliation of its heroine. Elizabeth might kneel in a brightly lit church in decorously silent, solitary prayer, but it’s Catholics who pray out loud, usually in spooky Latin, read from prayer books and clutch rosary beads, surround themselves with ominous berobed clerics bestowing church sanction on all manner of sinister goings-on, and worst of all, have religious ideas and motivations.

If someone says something like “God has spoken to me,” it’s a sure bet that (a) the speaker is a Catholic, and (b) whatever God had to say spells trouble for non-Catholics. Ditto any reference to “true believers,” “God’s work,” “legions of Christ,” you name it. In this world, God-talk is troubling Catholic behavior; Protestants don’t talk to, or about, God. Their religion is little more than a slogan for conscience, religious freedom, and of course heroic resistance to Catholic oppression.

“I will not punish my people for their beliefs — only for their deeds,” says Elizabeth, conveniently forgetting that in the last movie she rammed the Act of Uniformity through Parliament, outlawing the Catholic Mass and imposing compulsory attendance at Anglican services. In this version of history, the hosts of Catholics martyred under Elizabeth are all traitors and conspirators. “Every Catholic in England is a potential assassin,” Elizabeth’s advisors helpfully remind her in an early scene. Well, then, every Catholic in England is a potential political prisoner too.

Historically, the film is very loosely tethered to events from the 1580s, notably the execution of Mary Stuart (wasted Samantha Morton) and the defeat of the Spanish Armada of Philip II of Spain (Jordi Mollà). Opening titles inform us that Philip (a “devout Catholic,” in case you were wondering) has “plunged Europe into holy war,” and “only England stands against him.” Whom this holy war is being waged against, if “only England stands against him,” is not specified. Presumably the reference is to resistance to Turkish encroachment in the Mediterranean, but far be it from The Golden Age to muddy the waters of Catholic warmongering by mentioning Muslim expansion.

In attacking England, Philip is convinced that he’s on a mission from God: “England is enslaved to the devil,” he declares. “We must set her free.” Certain that God is on his side as he leads his nation into a holy war that becomes a debacle, Philip couldn’t be a blacker, nuttier Hollywood villain if his middle initial were W. Other flirtations with topicality in this pre-election year include assassins and conspirators praying secretly in a foreign language while plotting their murderous attacks, and the Machiavellian Sir Francis Walsingham (returning Geoffrey Rush) torturing a captured conspirator during an interrogation. (Tom Hollander, who costarred with Rush in the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels, is running around somewhere in this picture, an odd juxtaposition in another film that ends with a sea battle with cannons.)

The film does go on to concede that the Spanish have other grievances against the English besides religion, such as the Queen’s tolerant stance on English pirates like Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen) raiding Spanish ships. But it’s all a big circle: The raids are rationalized on the grounds that Philip is Elizabeth’s enemy, and the more gold English privateers seize from Spanish vessels, the less Philip has to wage war on England. That the raids give Philip more justification for going to war hardly matters, since we already know that he’s on a mission from God.

The romanticized Hollywood view of heroic English piracy against the galleons of Catholic Spain in old Errol Flynn–type movies like The Sea Hawk has always rubbed me the wrong way, and it hasn’t gotten any better with the passing of time. Or the substitution of Owen for Flynn.

The film’s romantic intrigues are if possible duller than its religio-political ones, though here at least the actors are able — occasionally — to rise above their material. Not always; in some scenes even Blanchett seems absurdly lost amid the puerility of her character’s romantic woes.

The original Elizabeth imagined the young queen carrying on a flagrant affair with Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester (Joseph Fiennes), but ended with its protagonist reinventing herself as a kind of Protestant Madonna figure, an iconic “Virgin Queen” (or at least “Like A Virgin” Queen, to borrow a phrase from another self-reinventing Madonna).

In this film, Elizabeth maintains her celibate image, her singleness given a feminist gloss in a closing monologue: “Unmarried, I have no master; childless, I am mother to my people. God give me strength to bear this mighty freedom.” The freedom of the single career woman!

As in the earlier film, the queen holds herself aloof from the constant pressure to marry and produce an heir, though there is no shortage of unsuitable suitors. There are more sparks with Raleigh, though he is more drawn to dewy young Bess (Abbie Cornish), a favored lady-in-waiting on whom the queen in turn dotes tenderly enough to suggest that the triangle goes all the way around. (There were also hints of something between Elizabeth and a lady-in-waiting in the original film.)

Elizabeth’s wonder at Raleigh’s rhapsodic account of his arrival in the New World is about as close to a positive religious experience as The Golden Age can muster. The ocean, Elizabeth muses, is a very “image of eternity,” and she wonders, “Do we discover the new world, or does the new world discover us?”

When it comes to literal religiosity, though, The Golden Age’s sensibilities are wholly unsympathetic. The climax, a weakly staged destruction of the Spanish Armada, is a crescendo of church-bashing imagery: rosaries floating amid burning flotsam, inverted crucifixes sinking to the bottom of the ocean, the rows of ominous berobed clerics slinking away in defeat.

Pound for pound, minute for minute, Elizabeth: The Golden Age could possibly contain more sustained church-bashing than any other film I can think of. Certainly the premise of The Da Vinci Code was far more objectionable, and The Magdalene Sisters was more absolute in its moral color-coding. (The torture of a young Catholic conspirator, even though guilty, represents a shade of grey that The Magdalene Sisters’s black-and-white approach would never have permitted.)

But in The Da Vinci Code the heavies were a secret cabal within the Church, not the visible hierarchy and all Catholics everywhere. An albino monk assassin is one thing (Opus Dei not being available in the sixteenth century, this film’s priest-assassin is supplied by the Jesuits). Here, “every Catholic in England” is at least potentially an assassin. The Magdalene Sisters may have been agitprop, but it highlighted genuine abuses within a Catholic institution, rather than depicting the Church and the Catholic faith as a force for evil and celebrating resistance to Catholicism as heroic humanism.

How is it possible that this orgy of anti-Catholicism has been all but ignored by most critics? As with The Da Vinci Code, early reviews of The Golden Age seem to be roundly dismissive, while sticking to safe, noncommittal charges of general lameness.[*]

If the object of the film’s vitriol were any group outside Christendom — say, if praying in Arabic were the sure sign of dangerous fanaticism, and if a Muslim prince were making holy war on Christendom with the blessings of all the eminent imams — would there be any shortage of critical objections to such stereotyping? As a lover of film criticism as well as film, I find the reviews more depressing than the film.

* Note: One of the few reviews in a major outlet that doesn’t ignore the film’s anti-Catholicism ran in my local New York area paper, the Newark Star-Ledger. Critic Stephen Whitty writes that the film “equates Catholicism with some sort of horror-movie cult, with scary close-ups of chanting monks and glinting crucifixes. There’s even a murderous Jesuit, played by Rhys Ifans like a Hammer-movie bad guy, or a second cousin to poor pale Silas from The Da Vinci Code.”

A sexual encounter (nothing explicit); brief rear female nudity; some crude language; a couple of gory torture/mutilation scenes and non-explicit execution/killings.

[SoCal Pubbie]

“the Indian populations survived in large numbers in the Spanish Empire, while they were almost entirely wiped out in English North America”

Huh? The Spanish enslaved and exterminated native populations far beyond the weak efforts of English speaking people in North America. While Mexico, Peru and Bolivia retain a much larger percentage of native peoples, around 30, 45 and 55 % respectively, the USA has just a slight percentage less than countries like Argentina, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Cuba and have larger native populations than Uruguay, Puerto Rico, and another Catholic country, Brazil.

[RobbyS]

The relationships between Ireland and England are a bit more relevant than those between the Gaul and the Romans. Otherwise there would not still be the unsettled matter of Catholics vs. Protestants in Ulster, or I shouild say between Irish nationalists and Unionists. There are tens of thousands of people still alive who were young people when the Irish Free State was created, many more who can remember DeValera, who kept Ireland neutral while Britain fought for her life against Nazi Germany.

[RobbyS]

Probably will see the movie when it comes out on DVD. I like Blanchett, and liked her in “Elizabeth.” That film, however, suffered also from a lack of balance. Like the part where Walsingham kills his assassin. Sure enough, assassination was —and is—a political tool. Many an attempt was made on Pole, whose claim to the throne was as good as Elizabeth’s or Mary Stuart.
William of Orange was taken out, of course. Does the film deal with the Dutch question in any depth? I have yet to see a film where it was made clear that the English were aiming to prevent the Armada from reaching the Netherlands to pick up Spanish troops poised. to invade England.

[RobbyS]

Don’t confuse Elizabeth with Jane Grey. Lady Jane was, like Edward, pious, as was the Catholic Mary, but Elizabeth was a political animal. You should know that no one every accused her of piety. For about ten years she held out the possibility that she might marry a Catholic prince. That ended, of course, after Pope Pius V, denounced her as a heretic. She had, of course, by that time renounced the Spanish alliance and had begun to intervene in the Netherlands and she would do what she could to helpo the Huguenots in France. Soon she would legitimize the piracy of Drake and others. As for her religious policy is concerned, England was slowly turning Protestant as the older generations died off. The Jesuits had entered the country both to rally the Catholics and to undermine her government. But the defeat of the Armada affirmed the Protestant Character of England and the Guy Fawkes episode—talk about a 9/11 event—discredited Catholicism.

[RobbyS]

The English Reformation took an anti-papal turn because of the divorce. Lutrheranism was not the only reform movement. Thomas More was as much a religious reformer as Thomas Cromwell, his successor, but he couldn’t give the king what he wanted. What occured, of course, was a revolution from above where the religion of the people was suppressed and tthe religion of Reformers like Cranmer was imposed. It was accomplished by the co-operation of the bishops and nobility. Only the prestige of the king prevented wide-spread resistance as in the case of the Pilgrimage of Grace.

[RobbyS]

The Spanishmay have “enslaved” the Indians, but they did not exterminate them. Why kill off workers of the land and mines? Disease did indeed decimate the Indian population. It is estimated that the population of Mexico went from about 15 million to one million between 1500 and 1600, when the Spanish took their first census. But it was bad policy to kill Indians after they could no longer fight, especially after they began to adopt the Chirstian religion. The Spanish system was based on the Latifunida system which the Spanish nobility had taken from the Romans. As to the English, it is ironic that after they created the Black Legend—which you repeat without question the English behaved exactly the same in their colonies inf New England and Virginia. But the indians in English North America were too thin on the ground to be enslaved. After being defeated in war, the Indians moved out of the way, for the most part. New England was indeed like Old England, and Virginia was colonized by importing white servants snd black slaves.

[onedoug]

I don't recall a single mention of the Netherlands. Though none of the entertainment theatres either.

I think it would be a mistake to put too much history onto this, or for that matter any other contemporary "Hollywood" vehicle, though this seems to have been made internationally and shot entirely within the British Isles. It dis-suspends belief and lets un-imagination rule one's thoughts, thus to undermine the the sense of "the play"...with any and all apologies to Shakespeare.

Best....

[johnthebaptistmoore]

I consider the ongoing War on Terror to be a religious war against Islamic Fascism.

[MockTurtle]

I have read a bit on this period of English history, and I have never heard that before. But whatever her personal wishes were, it didn't matter. She did what she thought would be good for England, so she avoided as much bloodshed as possible. She was raised a Protestant, and she remained a Protestant.

Where did you get the idea that Elizabeth avoided a lot of bloodshed? She put to death twice as many Catholics as Mary Tudor put to death Protestants. Many of them were priests and nuns.

[RobbyS]

Much obliged.

[SoCal Pubbie]

The reason for the enslavement was gold, a resource which North America was thought to be lacking at the time of colonization. I did not mean to imply that the Catholic Church itself was to blame for mistreatment of natives, nor that the English were loving and tender with the Indians they encountered. However the claim that the Spanish treated natives to the south so much better than the English did to the north is laughable, and yes, in some areas of Central and South America they were much better at extermination than the English were.

[Aquinasfan]

Same Old Bigotry in "Elizabeth: The Golden Age"

If it's a movie, I probably haven't seen it. Our family goes to the movies once or twice a year. We're very careful about what we support.

Sadly, this propaganda will have its effect, just like the Da Vinci crap.

[stripes1776]

. The fact is, starting from Henry VIII onwards, a new religion was imposed on the people of England without their ever having been given a choice in the matter.

And what choice in the matter did the Roman Emporer give to his citizens when he outlawed all religoins except Christianity and imposed that religion on all citizens?

[stripes1776]

. The fact is, starting from Henry VIII onwards, a new religion was imposed on the people of England without their ever having been given a choice in the matter.

Neutral because so many Irish were on the side of the Nazis.

[stripes1776]

but Elizabeth was a political animal.

A political animal? Of course, she was the queen of England. It was her political skills that made her one of the most effective sovereigns in English history. And she had no intention of marrying a Catholic king. She keep lots of man hanging on, with the hope all in the other direction.

[stripes1776]

Here is a duplicate of my former post so you don't have to even click to a different frame:

From The Western Heritage by Donald Kagan, Steven Ozment, Frank M. Turner:

Despite proven cases of Catholic treason and even attempted regicide, she [Elizabeth] executed fewer Catholics during her forty-five years on the throne than May Tudor had executed Protestants during her brief five-year reign.

I tend to trust anything with Donald Kegan's name attached to it.

So what sources are you quoting from?

[Noumenon]

Was Copernicus overtly persecuted by the Church? No - but he certainly understood the cost of going against the Church. The history of the the publication of Copernicus'De Revolutionibus grants us some insight into the danger of daring to publish anything contrary to Church ortodoxy. In this case, Copernicus' own introductory letter was substituted for one that disclaimed the merit of the work. The editor, until recently, was accused of excessive piety for not wanting to offend the church; now it is believed that he cleverly included the preface knowing full well that sophisticated readers would understand the necessity of the disclaimer merely as a ploy to get it past the church censors and into print. Galileo used something of the same device to get Discourses into print. He set up straw men who argued against his theories but who in the end had to concede their correctness.

So, in a very real sense, Copernicus escaped religious persecution by dying before the publication of his work.

And let us note that some sixty years later, Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for espousing Copernicus’ cosmological theory, and that later Galileo himself was convicted of heresy for the same crime. Galileo officially recanted his work, but never truly gave it up.

You state that the Church can and has thrived in many different socio-political-intellectual milieux - this much is true. History has clearly shown us that where the Christinaity in general and in particular, the Catholic branch has erred, it has always been in the pursuit of unbridled power and the corruption that accompanies such pursuits. Christianity's great strength is that, unlike Islam, it has and will continue to reform itself.

[RobbyS]

Neutral because the Germans had since the First War were willing to aid the Irish against the English. No particular love for the Nazis.

[RobbyS]

She had no intention of marrying a Catholic prince because her strength was in thje Protestant faction in the country. The Catholic faction had no one to oppose her, except Mary Stuart and she was a weak reed. But again, her religious sentiments were not strongly reformist, which is why a Puritan faction in the Church began to develop during the 1560s. Because she kept to the Prayer Book, Catholics could always hope that she might swing back in their direction, at least to the same place as Henry VIII.

[Unam Sanctam]

And what choice in the matter did the Roman Emporer give to his citizens when he outlawed all religoins except Christianity and imposed that religion on all citizens?

Not much, which all goes to show that religious toleration as we understand it is a fairly recent concept, starting round about the time of Locke, and even he excepted Catholics from his regime of toleration.