Movie Doubles

Novel Method

The idea of these Movie Double entries is to watch two movies in tandem and see if something comes out that wouldn't have come out otherwise. I don't know if this method is entertaining for you, the reader, so I'm sort of in a quandary as to whether I should continue with these. Maybe it's a daft way of watching movies, but I always like to hark back to the days when I'd go see a double-feature at the Valhalla. I used to dig the 'Blade Runner'-'Brazil' double as well as the 'Robot Monsters'-'Plan 9 From Outer Space' double. I always walked out with a head full of thoughts trying to get my head around ideas.

It helps if the two films have some kind of thread that binds them together, whether in subject or theme or maker. There's actually no rhyme or reason in watching these two films back to back, but for the fact that they were out late last year at about the same time and are period pieces set in England. Really, I watched them back to back for no reason whatsoever, but thought it might be interesting to see what I can write, connecting these two disparate films.

England Fighting - 'Elizabeth: The Golden Age' and 'Atonement'

What do we make of period pieces? There's a fine line between a historic epics like say, 'Quo Vadis' and 'Gladiator' and then literary adaptation such as 'Pride and Prejudice' and 'The English Patient'. That is to say, once a screenwriter gets hold a of piece of history to fictionalise, then, facts and sequences of events tend to make way for a 'good story'. On the other hand, when fine works of literature are converted to screen entertainment, the screenwriter tends to get a free hand in short-cutting somewhere around 100,000 words to squeeze out a 25,000 word screenplay.

The previous installment of 'Elizabeth', played by Cate Blanchett was a rather discomforting affair. She was great, but boy did they get a lot of things wrong. So I actually dreaded seeing the sequel, if nothing but for the sake of my own sense of history. Yes, Cate Blanchett was amazing in the previous film, and she was genuinely unlucky to run into Gwyneth Paltrow that year who played Lady Viola in 'Shakespeare in Love' at the Oscars. All I do remember is the furrowed, perplexed expression Cate Blanchett wore through the previous film.

The big surprise is to that her reprise of the role is actually very pleasing. This time around, she comes at the Virgin Queen with a variety of moods and expressions. I know the critical reception wasn't as good with this film as the previous one, but Cate Blanchett really is incredible in this film. As for the historical inaccuracies... Where do we begin? About the only thing that is right is that Walter Raleigh married Bess Throckmorton in secret, thus bringing down the wrath of the Queen. When Raleigh enters the court and presents potatoes and tobacco to the court, it's nothing short of Scriptwriters'-Shorthand in trying to telescope way too much story into one scene. The scenes in which he plays an action hero against the Armada is pure fantasy beyond the wildest of speculations - and it looks nowhere near as exciting as the climax of the 'Pirates of the Carribean' movies..

The main tenet of the film, which tries to present Queen Elizabeth as a queen presiding over a tolerant society is probably the high point. The England that Cate Blanchett's Queen reigns over is a far more heroic, passionate and liberal England than any that I've actually seen in real life or fiction. Which is why it is funny to watch it back to back with 'Atonement'.

The central event in 'Atonement' is set in the pre-WWII England, and the consequences play out during the war and even down to the present day. The England that the men fight for in that film is essentially class-ist, strangely insular and provincial and downright xenophobic. Most of the war action takes place with the leading man Robbie walking across they north of France towards Dunkirk with two other soldiers, followed by a spectacular staging of the withdrawal at Dunkirk. The English soldiers are in disarray and hardly seem proud or confident.

England at war must be one of the most common settings in fiction, I imagine. Think of the wars that England has fought, and there must be a hundred stories one could build in. Falklands War, WWII, WWI, the Boer War, the Crimean War, The Opium War, The Hundred Years War, the Civil War, the War of Independence in the Americas, the War against the USA in 1812, the Napoleonic Wars, the list goes on and on! So it strikes one as somewhat funny that Cate Blanchett's Queen Elizabeth, dressed in gleaming plate armour (+3 no doubt!), and makes a speech that is a little parody of the Henry V's St Crispin's Day speech. Furthermore, you get the feeling that the English are not yet done fighting, even today. One imagines that as long as there's a Monarch, England is always going to be a potential Imperialist power.

If 'Elizabeth; The Golden Age" is a retelling of Henry V, then 'Atonement' then seems like a retelling of 'Brideshead Revisited' and 'The Go-Between' but with much less humour or charm. While it is devoid of the Anglican-Catholic conflict which runs through 'Brideshead Revisited' (and interestingly 'Elizabeth' as well), the key event in the film is the false accusation of pedophilia, and the subsequent humiliation and incarceration and class issues then ensue. The whole thing is so low-key in its tone, it's the definition of the 'Low Mimetic' mode of fiction. Amazingly, 'Atonement' garnered more critical acclaim than the High Mimetic 'Elizabeth: The Golden Age', and it is most probably due to this mode.

Frock Opera As Genre
People laugh at the notion of a Rock Opera. People sneer at Space Opera. How is it that you stick some actresses in period frocks and smocks, and a film suddenly gets a more serious look? What is that?

Po-Mo and Pomo-Sexuality

I have huge reservations about the way the narrative is couched in 'Atonement'. It's one of the weird developments in fiction that the narrative is discredited by the narrator. 'Atonement' essentially has the character who is revealed to be a narrator tell us that what we saw is a lie. That within the narrative space, the event never took place.

I guess you can't really haul a fiction writer for creating a fiction within a fiction within a fiction, but this is a bit more dissatisfying than the puppet-play within the play within the film of Stoppard's movie version of 'Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Dead' - that one is actually funny. This one elicits more of a "Huh?"

There have been a number of films to play with the notion of an 'ending'. 'The Piano' famously sports a two-in-one ending where, she dies, but she also survives. It's clever and contributes greatly to the achievements of that film's immense agenda, the destruction of the patriarchal certainty in the narrative - but it is also the same ending as 'Wayne's World'. In Wayne's World', we are treated to three endings: The Happy, The Sad and the Scooby-Doo endings. By positing the different endings, both films tell us that narrative fiction relies on audience understanding of narrative tone, whether it may be happy or sad. We understand these things with terms such as Tragedy (Sad Ending) and Comedy (Happy ending).

With 'Atonement', however we reach the apotheosis where the narrative voice tells the audience front up that they lied. The scene we just saw did not take place, but is a scene that was envisaged to make up for the fact that it was never able to happen in the narrative space of the characters. In other words, the most important scene was "just a dream".

What's particularly annoying is that the whole film begins to tackle a very important subject- whether the testimony of a thirteen year old should be taken at face value when it comes to sexuality - and then having couched the necessary pre-conditions to tackle it, it simply runs away from the topic. Instead, it chooses to try and dazzle us with its narrative nous and fashionable disruption. It's a crock.

In recent days we've seen just hysterical the public can get about the sexuality of a thirteen year old girl. So it is understandable that when push came to shove, the author didn't really want to address the full ramifications of his own set-up. And I do ascribe it to Ian McEwan, the author of the book, because it's not as if I sit around thinking about plots to do with 13 year old girls' nascent sexuality.

So here we have a story that sets up the possibility of really coming at a subject that is troubling our society and cops out by essentially saying, "girls lie, authors lie, there is no certainty in any testimony." I'm not sure Bill Henson would've liked that as a legal defense had he been made to go to court. Furthermore, what is known as the 'Greater Epistemological Doubt' that presides over this notion is something of a white elephant. Anything can be subjected to the GED and end up wanting. At best, it was good when Descartes was figuring on the The Cogito', but it's an outdated tool.

The 'Atonement' then is hardly an atonement at all. If you can't provide a useful thought to the discourse, but want to look just look like you are, then get out of the damn room, I say. We have real cases, real people in our own world who are struggling with this very issue.

While we're on the subject of this gender-politic issue, I guess it should be pointed out that 'Elizabeth: The Golden Age' has two distinctly PoMo-Sexual moments: one is the bath scene, where Elizabeth is in the bath with court lady Bess in waiting is perhaps a little too close, with plenty of lesbian overtones. The other is obvious gender-bending of Elizabeth in plate mail armour, but we're at a point in history that we don't even notice the gender-bending but as mere affectation of the scene on the screen. Aren't we so fabulously decadent?; aren't we so open-minded and accepting now?

You wonder why I was at such odds with the prevalent ideological critical position, back at my film school... not. :)

Most Movie Critics Are Idiots

Between the two films, which one gets the higher critical raves? 'Atonement' (82%) seems to be the hands down winner over 'Elizabeth: The Golden Age' (33%). You definitely wonder at the critics who fell for the dumb trick rather than the film that at least fulfilled its narrative responsibilities to its audience fairly.