Elizabeth - The Golden Age Movie Review

BOTTOM LINE: Good film about Elizabeth's adult life, but focusing too much on the Queen's melodramas.

THE GOOD: The film delivers a fair account of the internal psychology of being a Monarch. The film delves in to the personal life of the Queen and offers a very human side to her; at times, she denies herself the simple pleasures of life to ensure she can carry out her duty as Queen (suggesting at one point that her close matron of the Court, Beth, be allowed to sample these pleasures for her). Cate delivers a brilliant performance as Queen Elizabeth, showing us a very strong, yet vulnerable monarch. Supporting players such as Geoffrey Rush, Clive Owen and Abbie Cornish are excellent. Period pieces often have the chance to show off production and costume design and this film succeeds extremely well in these departments. The film doesn't drag, with some solid acting, dramatisation, and cinematography. The music score was good.

THE BAD: This film deserves the 3-hour epic, full widescreen treatment. There were moments in the film where you feel it's about to break out and deliver the cinematic impact you're expecting, particularly with the impending battle with the Spanish armada, but the film chooses to return to Elizabeth and her personal life/problems. Not that spending time on the latter is a bag thing (and in fact is necessary even though it stoops in to melodrama), but the scope of the film seems diminished by focusing too much on her personal melodramas rather than her accomplishments as the Queen of England. As such, the storyline with Phillip of Spain almost comes across as an afterthought; he just pops up enough times to give the appearance of a threat, but not enough to make any kind of impact on the narrative. And being set in 1585, Elizabeth is historically meant to be 52 years old, yet Cate, lovely as she is, appears much younger than that!

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Why is Change So Scary?

Many people go to great lengths to avoid change, even when that change will be of great benefit to them. It is so amazing to watch people live their dreary, unfulfilled existences, complaining and carrying on about how dreadful their lives are, but completely unwilling to do anything about it. It's just so curious. Why would a person keep doing what they're doing, living so miserably and NOT do something about it? Could it be that change is so scary that we'd rather be miserable than risk the unknown? Well, it seems that is exactly what lots of folks do.

The definition of insanity is to continue doing the same thing over and over and expect different results. Crazy, indeed. So, why do we do it? Why do we stay mired in the muck rather than reaching for some new, unknown and possibly fabulous new life? In short, why is change so scary?

If you take a look at the evolution of humanity, it's pretty clear that change, for our earliest ancestors, involved the very real danger of death. As nomadic peoples moved from place to place in search of food, they were met with all kinds of life-threatening dangers from starvation to being eaten alive by some hungry predators. But move they did, because if they didn't, they'd certainly starve anyway. So they didn't even consider the risks of moving. They knew instinctively that if they wanted to eat, they'd have to change locations. Simple as that.

So those brave souls packed up their belongings and set out to find new food sources. They weathered the elements. They faced the tigers. They kept on moving until they found what they needed to survive. And in the face of all those dangers, they DID survive. We're living proof of that! What could we learn from them?

Well, now we don't have to move to eat. We can stay in our comfy little abodes and stop at the grocery store when our supplies run low. And there aren't any tigers to gobble us up. So, if we were to examine this fear of change a little deeper, and then come to realize that it's really NOT so scary, do you suppose we'd embrace change a bit more? Do you suppose that by acknowledging that all of Life is about change, we could maybe even come to love change? I believe that the more we embrace it, the more our lives grow into what they were meant to be: fulfilling adventures that keep us young, that inspire us to expand, that make us better human beings. Change comes in many forms and for those who embrace it, they often find that their lives are so much more meaningful after the fact. They find that once the change has been faced, it was really pretty easy. Because after we face our proverbial demons, we find that they were no more real than the boogie man under the bed was when we were kids. We find that the only boogie man was the one we made up in our heads. We find that this new place we've arrived in is so much better than where we were before. And suddenly change is not such a scary thing after all.

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