Film Reviews

Anonymous

• Rating:
• Director: Roland Emmerich
• Starring: David Thewlis
• Details: UK/Germany / 130mins (12A).

What's this? Roland Emmerich not blowing up a lot of stuff? The director of Godzilla, Independence Day and 2012 is in a more reserved mood in Anonymous, a re-imagining/re-interpretation of the life of William Shakespeare, but it's as equally ludicrous as his end-of-the-world movies: Did Shakespeare really write those plays and poems? Conspiracy theorists should lap this one up.
Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford (Ifans) approaches struggling writer Ben Johnson (Sebastian Armesto) to be his 'front', as it was seen as below the station of an Earl to write poems and plays. However, before the plan can click into action, William Shakespeare (Rafe Spall), a limited actor, claims that he's the writer of Oxford's plays, which are creating a stir. Meanwhile, Queen Elizabeth (Redgrave) learns of a plot to depose her from first her trusted advisor William Cecil (Thewlis), and then his son Robert (Edward Hogg). De Vere hopes to use his quill, which has a great influence over the mob, to severe the ties between the Queen and the conniving Cecils forever.
Or something. Anonymous is a movie of two halves and its first half can be quite confusing. The constant flashbacks and forwards don't allow the story to flow and it's difficult to suss out who is the younger version of whom. Edward de Vere is called Edward, de Vere, the Earl, Oxford, and the Earl of Oxford depending on who is talking to him and it doesn't help that Ifans looks nothing like his younger counterpart Jamie Campbell Bower. Rafe Spall is in a different film to the rest of the cast: Emmerich asks him to play the Bard as a bumbling illiterate buffoon and it just doesn't work (when told he has had a poem published, Shakespeare replies, "What, like in a book?"). Sure, Tom Hulce's Mozart was a giggling hyena in Amadeus but he was seen through the biased, jealous eyes of F. Murray Abraham whose prejudice exaggerated the personality of his enemy.
But somehow, about halfway through, that the plot finally settles down and Emmerich pulls a highly entertaining flick out of the muddle. The various subplots mesh into one strong narrative, albeit an increasingly implausible one, in the second half and the story becomes riveting. Despite the seriousness on show, it's great fun as the love story and political meanderings worm their way out of the deluge and become the film's focus.
Apart from Spall's turn, which was no fault of his own, it's hard to fault anyone here. Ifans is fantastic as the haunted Earl. Thewlis is magnificent and Edward Hogg's turn as the hunchbacked Robert Cecil is a memorable one: a cunning and ruthless plotter but also one that drowns in self-pity and fear. Redgrave, and her younger counterpart Joely Richardson, have two different takes on the Queen but each one works.

Review by Gavin Burke