{"id":2859,"date":"2011-09-18T18:26:35","date_gmt":"2011-09-18T18:26:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=2859"},"modified":"2015-03-31T09:09:51","modified_gmt":"2015-03-31T09:09:51","slug":"tiff-film-review-roland-emmerich%e2%80%99s-%e2%80%98anonymous%e2%80%99","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=2859","title":{"rendered":"TIFF FILM REVIEW: Roland Emmerich\u2019s \u2018Anonymous\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Vanessa Redgrave as Queen Elizabeth 1 and Rhys Ifans as Edward de Vere in ‘Anonymous’<\/p><\/div>\n

By Ray Bennett<\/p>\n

TORONTO \u2013 It\u2019s curious that the lives of many creative men, e.g. Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, are so uninteresting, and in the case of William Shakespeare there is also a distinct lack of information. So you cannot blame Roland Emmerich for his choice to focus on the far richer and more interesting life of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, in \u201cAnonymous\u201d, which Sony will release in the UK on Oct. 28.<\/p>\n

The result is a thoroughly enjoyable \u201cwhat if\u201d movie and while the question of who wrote all those wonderful plays is central to the story and is exploited with sly wit, it\u2019s really about the politics of the court of Elizabeth I.<\/p>\n

Fans of C. J. Sansom\u2019s Shardlake novels and Hilary Mantel\u2019s \u201cWolf Hall\u201d will relish the film\u2019s depiction of the ferocious internecine chicanery of powerful figures that plot to decide who will succeed Elizabeth on the English throne.<\/p>\n

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Rafe Spall plays William Shakespeare as an opportunistic buffoon<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s a sumptuous epic, with genuinely pleasing CGI images of 17th century London, and while the notion that someone other than the Bard of Avon wrote the best plays ever written adds to the film\u2019s enjoyment, it\u2019s the intrigue that enthrals.<\/p>\n

Lovers of Shakespeare will delight in the many hints at who inspired notable characters in the plays attributed to him. The playwright is regarded generally as a P.R. man for the Tudors, and Emmerich posits that so too was De Vere. Historical facts and the dates of events are blurred to the service of the entertaining plot but like a Shakespeare play, the broad truth appears to be sound.<\/p>\n

John Orloff\u2019s screenplay covers the period at the end of the queen\u2019s life with flashbacks to an earlier time. There are lovers and plotters, and questions of parentage, loyalty and betrayal are woven cleverly.<\/p>\n

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Director Roland Emmerich employs CGI to great effect to depict 17th century London<\/p><\/div>\n

Vanessa Redgrave is energetic and powerful as the ageing monarch while her daughter Joely Richardson makes the younger queen both beautiful and cunning. Rhys Ifans gives his best performance yet as De Vere, an elegant and intense intellectual denied the opportunity to make public his brilliance, and Jamie Campbell Bower (Arthur in TV\u2019s \u201cCamelot\u201d) makes the young Oxford full of life and bursting with ideas.<\/p>\n

Sebastian Armestro is an earnest and likeable Ben Johnson while Rafe Spall is required to play Will as a bombastic, drunken and conniving opportunist. David Thewlis and Edward Hogg play the villainous Cecils, father and son, with great panache; Trystan Gravelle is appropriately oily as a Christopher Marlowe viewed as deeply flawed, and Sam Reid and Xavier Samuel are handsome and dashing as the Earls Essex and Southampton, whose plotting comes to a bad end.<\/p>\n

Sebastian Krawinkel\u2019s production design delivers a pleasing eyeful, Anna J. Foerster\u2019s cinematography is suitably epic and so is the score by Thomas Wander and Harald Kloser.<\/p>\n

The film is a departure from Emmerich\u2019s sober-sided disaster pictures and he displays a flare for comedy as well as suspense and intense drama. It\u2019s a lot of fun.<\/p>\n

Venue: Toronto International Film Festival; Cast: Rhys Ifans, Vanessa Redgrave, Joely Richardson, David Thewlis, Xavier Samuel, Sebastian Armesto, Rafe Spall; Director: Roland Emmerich; Screenwriter: John Orloff; Producers: Roland Emmerich, Larry Franco, Robert L\u00e9ger; Director of photography: Anna J. Foerster; Production designer: Sebastian Krawinkel; Music: Thomas Wander, Harald Kloser; Editor: Peter R. Adam; Costume designer: Lisy Christi; Executive producers: Volker Engel, Marc Weigert, John Orloff. Production: Anonymous Pictures Ltd; Distributor: Sony Pictures Releasing; UK rating 12, 130 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ray Bennett TORONTO \u2013 It\u2019s curious that the lives of many creative men, e.g. Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, are so uninteresting, and in the case of William Shakespeare there is also a distinct lack of information. So you … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,14],"tags":[1649,1012,1650,1103,1192,1243],"class_list":["post-2859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-reviews","tag-anonymous","tag-rhys-ifans","tag-roland-emmerich","tag-sony-pictures","tag-toronto-international-film-festival","tag-william-shakespeare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2859"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6698,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2859\/revisions\/6698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}