September 10, 2008

• The Other Boleyn Girl - SPOILERS INCLUDED

  Just watched The Other Boleyn Girl, which I rented from iTunes.  Here are my thoughts:

  I didn't like it.  I will say first that I have not read the book upon which this film is based.  I'm not sure how many of these faults of the film are due to the source material of the book, or whether they were decisions made by the filmmakers, but here are my observations nontheless. 

  First, the film played fast and loose with the history.  Very much so.  I will make absolutely no claim to be any authority on English history, but from what I know and what I have learned from a little quick internet research prior to watching the movie it seems that they were rather liberal with the characters and situations involved.  ...And that they glossed over a great deal of important events in an effort to condense the time scale, so much so that we are left with absolutely no sense of any of the contributions the actual Anne Boleyn made to the history of England.  In between her coronation and her death, we are only shown her fretting about not being able to bear Henry a son, and then fearing for her life - we do not know of anything she (or in fact any of the political players involved, at any point throughout the course of the film) did in their positions.  This helpless fear is the only sense we are left with of her three-year reign as Queen of England.  I could accept this if they showed a few more moments of character development, or a few more scenes of why we even care about her place in history after so much time has passed, but the film has neither of these two things.

  In fact, the film seems to be very ambivalent upon how it portrays her - the dialogue and plot clearly intend on vilifying her as much as possible.  She is presented as utterly one-dimensional:  manipulative, conniving, ambitious, deceitful, and the charges of incest which led to her execution are presented to be somewhat founded (even while most historians agree it was a totally trumped-up charge).  In fact, her character is given very little in the way of redeeming character traits, if any.  However, in an odd turnabout, the filmmakers still try to put a sympathetic spin on her character by acknowledging at the very end that it was her child who would become the future Queen Elizabeth I of England. 

  Next, I found the acting by most of the primary cast to be flat and uninspired: despite how her character is written, Natalie Portman does not portray Anne as the confident and manipulating character that the dialogue she speaks clearly intends her to be.  Eric Bana seems to only have one mode throughout the entire film and that is angry and mad, with brief flashes of bewilderment in scenes he shares with Scarlet Johansson.  He also bears very little similarity to the paintings we have come to know of Henry VIII; you'd think he could have at least lost a few muscles and gained a few pounds for the part.  I don't know if it was me, but I couldn't see Jim Sturgess (who plays the brother, George Boleyn) as anybody other than his character Jude from Across the Universe - which is somewhat ironic considering that Across the Universe was a film of Beatles music and his character's name is George. Of the main cast, Scarlet Johansson seems to give the only adequate performance, playing her character as both sympathetic, trapped by events, but yet still having a quiet dignity throughout the film.  In fact, I was far more impressed by the supporting cast playing the Boleyn parents and Catherine of Aragon than most of the leads.

  The dialogue, I will simply say that it was forced and artificial.  The entire 'heated' exchange between Henry and Anne after Catherine is banished and leading up to Anne's rape by Henry reads as a feeble way of listing historical events that are supposed to have happened (but are not actually shown) between Catherine's marriage annulment and Anne's coronation.

  The final glaring fault in the film is that if you look under the surface, it really has a low-budget feel to it.  While the costumes and the locations chosen are lush and extravagant, many cinematic choices seem jarring.  Most obvious is the one aerial shot of Henry's castle (presumably Whitehall or Hampton Court?) complete with fake-looking clouds surrounded by a protesting mob, which screams "I was done in CGI".  You will also notice the almost omnipresent sound effect drone of screaming people throughout the latter third of the film (a cheap way of making it seem like there are protesting citizens beyond the castle walls), but it seems they could not afford to pay more than twenty extras or so to film an actual mob in any particular scene.  I was left with the feeling that they could have done so much more to give the viewer a feel of the era, perhaps a more romantic sensibility of medieval England through a little bit more scenery-chewing so well done in other historical films.  Even the film's musical score was at best uninspired; one quickly tires of the ominous and plotting themes - if they may be called such - that populate the entire film like the grey fog of the British Isles.

  Two Lightning Bolts out of Five.
  

  • 8:50 am
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