Blanchett rules. But Shekhar Kapur's sequel to the heady brew of his Elizabeth is pretty weak tea served to a bombastic musical score. Though Kapur alternates scenes of dungeon gloom with those of sunlit splendor, the dark/light dark/light dark/light pacing makes for a choppy moviegoing experience.
The new film is set between 1585 and 1588, a period when the so-called Virgin Queen executed her cousin Queen Mary of Scotland, and immolated the fleet of her brother-in-law King Philip II of Spain (Jordi Molla). It has no shortage of historical drama.
Yet the film's primary focus is on QE1's unconsummated affair with Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen, heavily plated with bronzer) rather than these affairs of state.
Just returned from the New World, the swaggering explorer pays court to Elizabeth by boasting he just named a colony after her: Virginia.
The monarch knows a pickup line when she hears one. Her reply, "And should I marry, you would change the name to Conjugia?", would be a good quip in Latin class but it sounds forced in this context.
Some of the most effective dramas about heads of state (for instance, The Queen or Becket) are displaced romances where the combative relationship between ruler and adviser mimics that of soul mates.
The political intrigues hatched between the future queen and her Machiavellian adviser, Walsingham (Geoffrey Rush), propelled the first Elizabeth. "There is one mistress here! No master!" declared the young queen in that film where Kapur, scribe Michael Hirst, and the phenomenal Blanchett made clear that Elizabeth's regime would be undermined if she appeared to be rooster-pecked. Her primary relationship must be with England.
