The Agency's Posts

Grammys 2013: The performance mash-ups to dread: The best thing theGrammystelecast attempts to do is also its most tricky feat to accomplish:....
Read More>

Review: Laughs stolen in 'Identity Thief': The script for this revenge/road trip farce is a mess, but Melissa McCarthy is a gem and Jason....
Read More>

Kelly McGillis recalls making the 1986 blockbuster 'Top Gun': “I feel the need, the need for speed” Maverick and Goose are flying high once....
Read More>

Kristen Wiig joins Will Ferrell in 'Anchorman' sequel: Kristen Wiigis joining the cast ofWill Ferrell's "Anchorman" sequel. Knights of....
Read More>

'Lincoln' pierced ears, 'Argo' pecs? Talk about period drama: With his concave cheekbones, lanky build and grooved brow,Daniel Day-LewisreplicatesAbraham....
Read More>

De Niro's thoughts on some of his most memorable films: cWith a career that stretches back to the 1960s,Robert De Nirohas been in more than his share....
Read More>

Saturday NIght Movie Pick: <iframe width="350" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NApJ
Read More>

Justin Timberlake to perform at the Grammy Awards: TheGrammy Awardsstill have the ability to surprise. The Recording Academy unveiled this morning....
Read More>

Rediscovering Lee Marvin's gritty brilliance: The versatile Oscar-winner, who died at 63 in 1987, is the subject of a new biography, a....
Read More>

W. Kamau Bell gets talk-show lessons from Chris Rock: W. Kamau Bell, host of FX's "Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell," said he is trying....
Read More>

Amanda Seyfried says 'Mean Girls' was her 'best work': Amanda Seyfriedis getting quite a bit of love for her latest films "Lovelace" and"
Read More>

SAG Awards 2013: 'Argo' a go-go; Day-Lewis now Oscar frontrunner: A big win for Ben Affleck and cast raises the film's best picture chances in the Oscar race,....
Read More>

Bono reveals details about new U2 studio album: A newU2album is rattling (and humming) to life. Inan interviewwith England's Sun newspaper,....
Read More>

Jenna Lyons, the Woman Who Dresses America: IT’S hard to miss Jenna Lyons. About nine feet tall and slim as a mink, often....
Read More>
Movie review: 'Anonymous'
Posted on: 11/02/11
Share/Save/Bookmark

The film, with Rhys Ifans as Edward de Vere, the film's purported bard behind Shakespeare, is no classic, but it's fun.

 

"Anonymous" — starring a sizable swath of Britain's resident acting class — is an ambitiously biting (gnawing?) literary whodunit turning on the Shakespeare question. As in, who really wrote all those seminal plays and sonnets, a long-running scholarly debate that (unlike the actual author) apparently will never die.

That might sound like costume drama taken to deadly boring academic extremes. But surprisingly, in director Roland Emmerich's usually effects-heavy hands ("Independence Day," "The Day After Tomorrow" and oh so many more), we have something closer to a fanciful commedia dell'arte. It's Shakespeare as B-movie, if you will, or to borrow from the bard, a boffo blast, which I'm pretty sure is from either "King Lear" or "Hamlet."

There are palace intrigues, beddings and beheadings, and lots of well-staged theater. Rhys Ifans turns out to be the best surprise of all — excellent as the eminence of pathos, the 17th Earl of Oxford, who (in this telling) wielded "the" mighty pen and had the ink-stained hands to prove it. Screenwriter John Orloff ("A Mighty Heart") doesn't do half bad himself.

"William Shakespeare" — whoever he was — I think would probably be at least a little amused by "Anonymous." For amusing it is — along with bawdy, brazen, politically outrageous, plausible enough and occasionally graced with something close to Shakespearean cleverness in an absurdist sort of way.

To set things up, the film opens as if we're watching a current production in London's West End, an actor on stage in a single spotlight, setting up the Shakespeare mythology. It quickly dissolves into Shakespeare's time, richly rendered from the pomp and ceremony of the royal court to the mud and muck of 16th century London.

As imagined in "Anonymous," William Shakespeare was an illiterate actor, barely able to write his name, much less a sonnet, and an opportunist with an outsized ego, all of which actor Rafe Spall ("Shaun of the Dead," "Hot Fuzz") handles nicely. The real playwright and poet was Edward De Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, who for complicated reasons needs a front man for his work. De Vere is played with great aplomb by Ifans, unrecognizable from his naked "Notting Hill" days, in fact unrecognizable from anything he's ever done. Let us just point out that he does Elizabethan aristocracy very well indeed.

A noted writing contemporary of Shakespeare's, Ben Jonson(Sebastian Armesto, excellent in his creative frustration), is the man De Vere ultimately entrusts with his plays and with carrying out what really is — if it is — one of the greatest ruses ever. For all the royal betrayals, one of the rather delicious subtexts is that fights between writers for literary supremacy are just as deadly as struggles for the crown.

In a neat bit of symmetry, Vanessa Redgrave plays Queen Elizabeth I in her waning days, and Redgrave's daughter Joely Richardson plays the monarch in her lusty younger years — in this telling, "the Virgin Queen" is so in name only. The queen's confidant, William Cecil (David Thewlis), and later his nefarious hunchback son Robert (Edward Hogg) are De Vere's nemeses, both bristling with disdain for the Lord Oxford's various obsessions.

There are many more earls and lads and ladies in waiting in this sprawling cast. There is a crown in the offing for someone if they can just keep their heads about them. And overriding it all is the anonymous bard — writing what he sees, writing what he fears and putting it out there as fast as he can to inflame and inform the masses. If the filmmakers have done nothing else, they have turned "the pen is mightier than the sword" from mere axiom into action hero.

One of the film's great pleasures is the way in which Orloff uses fragments of Shakespeare's plays to fit the moment and mood of the time — it's all ripped-from-the-headlines stuff. This is where Emmerich's special-effects history pays off smartly too. London — from its world of theater to its class divides — comes to life exquisitely on screen (so hats off to the production/costume crews).

Beyond the filmmakers' attention to detail, it's interesting to watch snippets of the plays — so literate and lofty and set inside a world theoretically known only to members of the royal court (thus how could Shakespeare have written Shakespeare?) — completely understood and embraced by those unwashed masses. Which raises the question….

Because the film keeps picking up threads of so many of its characters from childhood, adulthood and later years; because the palace intrigues are so complex; and because, let's face it, this is not Shakespeare, "Anonymous" occasionally comes apart at the seams. But amusing and diverting it is, and on any given day, amusing and diverting is enough.

betsy.sharkey@latimes.com



COMMENTS
Be the first to post a comment!


Post A Comment:




  • It's 2020! Start booking roles in commercials, fashion, films, theater and more with The Agency Online!

  • NEW WORKSHOP with Barbara Barna & Sean De Simone!

    Hi Everyone and Happy Summer! Sean at Sean De Simone casting and Barbara Barna are teaming up for a super informative and fun Hosting for Home Shopping workshop. A great opportunity for established or experienced TV Hosts and Experts interested in learning how to get noticed and how to get in....
  • MASTERCLASS W. Robin Carus & David John Madore

    A Special Offer for the Agency Community, from one of our favorite NYC Casting Directors! EMAIL FacetheMusicWithUs@gmail.com Or Eventbrite To Sign Up! Class Size is Limited.
  • Don't Fall Into The Comparison Trap

    Hi Everyone! As the second installment in an ongoing series of features by the Agency's amazing community, here's some sage advice from our own Regina Rockensies; a humble (& awesome)veteran we've had the pleasure of working with for a long time. Have an excellent week! : ) - The Agency....
  • One Model's Agreement

    Hi Everyone! As the first piece in an ongoing series of original articles by the Agency community, here's a short reflection on some of the values of professional acting & modeling that we can all keep in mind for our next casting. Good luck on your castings &shoots this week! : ) -....




 
home       castings&news       privacy policy       terms and conditions      contact us      browser tips
Official PayPal Seal