![]() ![]() Next in line is her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, a devout Roman Catholic imprisoned in a castle in Northamptonshire. Now in her early fifties, Elizabeth is vulnerable since Phillip II of Spain is intent on conquering England and especially because she has not married and produced an heir. Protestant England is on its knees, as Roman Catholic Spain has become Europe's most powerful country. The set-up is rich with possibilities only partially realized on screen. This period of her life is familiar from a number of previous films and miniseries, but this time, the psychological complexity behind such a fascinating historical figure has been downgraded in favor of romance novel plot turns and paper-thin character development. Set in 1585, the film picks up the Queen's life a quarter century after the first film, and what follows in the strangely cautious screenplay by Michael Hirst and William Nicholson is a simplistic portrait of an aging, superstitious woman aware of her power but ironically at a loss to define her own fate. ![]() Far from it, all the production values are first-rate, including a relatively seamless use of CGI in the Spanish Armada sequence, but beyond all the pomp and circumstance, the mindset of the story is pure 1940's-era studio melodrama. I don't mean the newer movie is a stodgy historical pageant. There is something stubbornly old-fashioned about Shekhar Kapur's 2007 sequel to his 1998 art-house triumph, "Elizabeth". ![]()
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