Reviews

It's just possible that this movie takes fewer liberties with English history than did William Shakespeare in his history plays. (That's "possible," not "likely.") But here's the difference: the history plays were written by William Shakespeare, and this movie was written by John Orloff.

If you really believe that the Earl of Oxford was the "real" Shakespeare, I have a bridge in San Francisco Bay you might want to buy from me. But that's for later. Meanwhile, "Anonymous" has as much to do with a serious presentation of the "case for Oxford" as it has for the "case for alien abduction." In Orloff's version, Oxford can't help but write one brilliant play after another because he hears voices in his head. Now there's a premise for another movie, maybe with Shakespeare hearing voices, etc., etc., but nothing comes of it here. It's just, you know, voices in his head. Also, he's somehow squandered most of his family's wealth, though it's not explained how. Quills, ink, and paper seem to be his only expenses.

Since Oxford is a noble, he's not "allowed" to write plays. So to get his creations in front of the public, he tries to get Ben Jonson to front for him. Jonson thinks the plays just aren't him, so when the drunken, obnoxious, illiterate, whoring, egotistical, sleazy-looking ham actor Shakespeare offers to take on the job, Ben agrees.

Oxford makes sure that every play he writes has a political message, and that message is usually to subvert Lord Cecil, Oxford's father-in-law and the real brains behind the throne now that Elizabeth is half senile. Why? Why, to keep King James of Scotland from inheriting the realm as Liz wishes. But what's wrong with that? Who knows! Not John Orloff! All he knows is that Oxford wants the Queen's lover, Essex, on the throne. Why Essex? Beats me. Would Essex make a better king? The movie doesn't say, so I guess the answer is obviously yes.

SPOILER: for no reason at all except to make you go "Whoa! Dude!" Oxford turns out to be Liz's bastard son. As well as her other lover! Whoa!! Dude!! Have you ever seen a Shakespeare movie like this? I doubt it! After this revelation, and after Essex has his head removed by the Royal Executioner after the theater audience has stormed the palace waving pitchforks (which they must have brought with them to the show), Oxford dies for no particular reason. But Ben saves the plays. And King James loves them! (Lucky for us all, Ben was the only rioter in the front line to survive bullets and cannon balls fired point blank.) Expressive acting by Derek Jacobi as the Prologue (a device cleverly borrowed from "Henry V") shows up everybody else as just pretty good. Fine costumes and sets - when you can see them on the unusually dark screen. No rap or grunge in the soundtrack.

I hear you saying, "Hey, jerkface, it's just entertainment!" So very true if you're entertained by a pretentious plot that makes little sense on it own terms and that wildly distorts history without making it any more interesting. (The mammoth stampede down the ramp of the Great Pyramid in director Emmerich's "10,000 BC" was one of the great all-time movie scenes, in my opinion.) What's a little bit creepy is that "Anonymous" is openly devoted to showing the real William Shakespeare as a contemptible idiot and Elizabeth I as lacking all notable qualities except lifelong horniness. I guess there's a demand for films that depict history's greats as "really" having been corrupt, disgusting louts. Why is that?

Best scenes: Oxford recites or composes a sonnet while Liz gives him oral sex. Later, Shakespeare (murderer of Christopher Marlowe) secretly tails Oxford disguised in a fake beard-and-nose on a stick, and hides behind a chicken so he won't be seen.

Here's what you'll need to believe - for starters - in order to enjoy this movie:

1. A Canadian soldier gets a medal - promptly - simply for bayoneting a German in the head.

2. Though badly wounded, he deserts, is caught, and somehow winds up back in Canada even though he's being threatened with execution as a deserter.

3. On top of that, all three of his brothers have already been killed (as in "Saving Private Ryan"), and when he's reported missing his mother "dies of a broken heart." And that's just the first fifteen minutes! (I left out the part where a geeky blue-collar kid has sex with the gorgeous daughter of Calgary's leading physician on a table in the newspaper office where he works - in super-prudish, pre-Pill 1917. And the daughter wears a see-through blouse to a formal dinner party. The word "passion" is prominently mentioned a couple of times.) There's an evil, cowardly English officer, who is a worse villain than any German. There's the hero's nurse sweetie who, in one night, kicks morphine cold-turkey with his help. And there's the fact that all four main characters wind up together at Passchendaele.

Whether or not you've seen "The Passion (get it?) of the Christ," you won't be ready for the explosion that magically blows the geeky guy out of a German trench into an upright, barbed-wire-and-wooden-plank crucifixion. Honest! Then the hero crosses 200 yards of swampy No Man's Land under fire from a hundred German guns - unhurt except for blood across his forehead. Then he hauls the cross, with his pal still writhing, back to Canadian lines. A bloody miracle! You get two Christs instead of one! A German officer nods his head in sadness and approval.

The evil Englishman has already been blown up by a different magic shell that leaves the half-dozen Canadians around him unfazed and untouched. He's just uttered the cowardly words, "If the enemy breaks through, we'll be in DANGER!" The final scene of endless crosses is ripped off from the moving finale of "Oh What a Lovely War!" (1969).

There's more foolishness that I won't even mention.

The battle scenes are effective. But there *is* that crucifixion thing.

And you won't learn much about Passchendaele, except that it was awful. A postscript tells us that the Germans retook the ground a few months later, so the effort was futile. That's as close as this movie gets to being informative.

The postscript doesn't mention, though, that Allied soldiers won the war, and as a result Germany became a democracy for a number of years - until Hitler showed up.

This is bad soap opera. No more, no less. And girls - you get to see a guy's ass close up while he's having sex!