Common Sense Note
Parents need to know that there is a brief but vividly gruesome scene of public torture and executions by disembowelment. There are also decapitations, in grim, blood-spurting close-ups. Queen Elizabeth's personal life and affairs are more important here than affairs of state (practically the same, in fact). An opening credit scene of the Queen non-explicitly undergoing a ritualistic gynecology exam might incite some questions.
Families can talk about why Elizabeth gives up personal happiness to hold onto her throne. Is it a lust for power? A sense of duty to the British people? No decent guys around? Maybe a combination of the three? Could a story like Elizabeth's happen in today's style of government? The film could open up a college semester's worth of tangents on British history, like the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the lineage of King Henry VIII, the Stuart Kings, and the inception of the Church of England.
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Charles Cassady, Jr.
Before Helen Mirren played The Queen, the 20th century's Elizabeth II, she played the queen, Elizabeth I, of the 16th century, in this handsome, dialogue-dense HBO miniseries.
It begins somewhat in the middle of a much longer and wildly complicated chronicle of English politics and successions. Viewers must already know Elizabeth I turned out to be the heir of King Henry VIII, the larger-than-life monarch who married six times and broke with the powerful Catholic church in Rome, both over his divorces and a nationalistic drive to separate England from the foreign influence of the Papacy.
Thus, as ELIZABETH I begins in 1578, Henry's daughter Elizabeth rules a country where Catholics and Protestants have become bitter enemies. Moreover, after 20 years on the throne, Elizabeth is still unmarried in middle age -- though carrying on a longtime affair with the Earl of Leicester (Jeremy Irons). Her counselors urge her to unite in matrimony with a French duke to strengthen England by the alliance between Britain and France. To her surprise, Elizabeth finds herself genuinely falling love with the Frenchman, who is a Catholic. Negative public opinion (and Leicester's scheming) force her to end the relationship.
Seven years later the Catholic-vs.-Protestant schism has grown worse, with rumors that the Catholic-allied empire of Spain plots to usurp the throne. The queen's Catholic cousin and childhood playmate, Mary, Queen of Scots (Barbara Flynn), is kept in prison because she supposedly conspired against Elizabeth's life, and all Elizabeth's counselors recommend her execution. Elizabeth hesitates and wavers, but finally Mary's head is chopped off. The Spanish fleet is defeated (off-screen), and Elizabeth's military triumph is tainted by the ailing Leicester's death.
Soon the fiftysomething Elizabeth has a new suitor, Leicester's stepson, the Earl of Essex (Hugh Dancy). He's dashingly handsome and ambitious, and gets away with a lot by being the queen's royal boy-toy. While he claims to love Elizabeth completely, he and his young comrades clash with the older generation of Elizabeth's longtime advisors. Finally Essex goes too far by leading a doomed rebellion. Even before being executed as a traitor, Essex declares he did it all for his love of the queen.
In a climactic speech Elizabeth owns that her greatest love and devotion was for the English people, as opposed to any one man -- although growing old and dying unwed, she seems in private a little less majestic and more bitter about it. Mirren, however, is majestic in the role of someone who still captivates the public imagination; a woman who had everything but who set marriage and family aside in order to do her duty as a leader of a nation. Or was it more because all men around her were two-faced schemers with their eyes on the crown? It's hard to tell.
Elizabeth I is a very talky epic (this was, after all, the same era as William Shakespeare; dude must have learned that flowery language somewhere), and your main attempt to interest more action-oriented young viewers might lay with the presence of actor Ian McDiarmid -- the insidious Emperor Palpatine of the Star Wars series -- as one of the queen's advisors. You can point him out and tell kids that the pageant of European monarchs, rival empires, and successions they have to study in history class is every bit as colorful and complex as the Siths, Jedis, Ewoks, Droids, and Clone Wars dreamt up by George Lucas. And you can still tour the castles today.
Was Elizabeth a follower of the dark side of the Force, though? The script paints her in all shades, from the "Mum" who could inspire her subjects through crisis to a cloistered, uncertain woman who oversaw (or looked the other way) horrific executions and torture. At one point Elizabeth tells her counselors not to underestimate her because she's female -- and that women know more about cruelty than men. Yet she's also manipulated by her desire for Leicester and Essex. The paradox of being all-powerful and yet helpless at the same time would not have been suffered by a king. Or would it?
Much is made here of the nationalism-driven hatred between Catholics and Protestants, a component usually overlooked in earlier tellings of Elizabeth's story. And there have been many other tellings indeed: Hollywood queen Bette Davis portrayed Elizabeth I no fewer than two times. So did British actress Flora Robson. Other notables include Cate Blanchett in the R-rated Elizabeth. A less blood-spattered alternative for tweens and up (but interesting to discuss in contrast with these real-life queens) is the Princess Diaries series.
Rate It!
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Sexual ContentAn opening credit scene of Elizabeth I being slowly, ritualistically stripped for what turns to be a gynecological exam (not explicit). There is intense smooching and cuddling with the Queen, but it never goes farther than that. One character is described as a homosexual. A couple of young, unmarried women are revealed to be pregnant. |
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ViolenceThough it takes up just a small amount of screen time, it's pretty intense. There is a grisly scene of torture, with disembowlments and eviscerations of living men. A woman is decapitated by an executioner, not very cleanly and in ghastly closeup. A public hand-chopping-off shown from a distance. An assassination attempt on the Queen by dagger, and there is a swordfight that draws blood. A man undergoes torture on the rack. Musket fire kills a number of men. |
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LanguageThe Queen calls a character "a son of a whore." The term "bitch" as a double-entendre. |
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Social BehaviorNot many movies are made about kindly, well-behaved, and peaceful kings and queens. Elizabeth is mercurial -- passionate, poised, and witty but also often moody and bitter, and at one point unleashes a reign of torture and executions against her supposed enemies (Catholics, mainly). Though under some circumstances she can hardly be blamed for not showing more grace under pressure. At the end of her life her bad choices seem to weigh heavily on her, or do they? Her famous virginity is a constant theme, but is rarely discussed directly, and in a final scene she more or less declares her love for the British people over her own affairs. Her two main suitors, Essex and Leicester, don't quite love Elizabeth enough to not get other women pregnant, but the older Leicester seems to have widsom and humility more on his side. Only one of the Queen's advisors, the dwarfish Robert Cecil, seems immune to all the plotting and scheming at the court. |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoSocial drinking, talk of the quality of Ireland's whiskey. |
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