B
bones_IV
Guest
Has anyone seen the movie Elizabeth? What’s it about? It was made about 1998 or so.
- Status
M
mommyof4
Guest
Yep. It was about the reign of Elizabeth I of England. It was ok, but rather violent. A lot of anti-Catholic stuff in it, too. I did some reading about her reign after seeing the movie, and the movie wasn’t very accurate.
L
LilyM
Guest
Like most history movies, sadly. The opening scenes are pretty gruesome and anti-Catholic. Though the non-Catholics, including Elizabeth herself, hardly come out smelling like roses either.
M
mommyof4
Guest
Very true.
C
CathCentrist
Guest
Good movie, and Cate Blanchet is reprising this role in a sequel to the 98 film. The trailer looks EPIC!
C
Contarini
Guest
Yes. I watched it with the woman I was dating at the time, who was Catholic. I thought it was anti-Catholic–she thought it wasn’t because all sides were portrayed so negatively. She probably had a point, but I still thought the movie basically drew on the Whig Protestant English-nationalist narrative.
Edwin
S
Sierrah
Guest
I won’t go into all the inacuracies of the movie. That would take all day. 
Needless to say I read quite a bit on Elizabeth I her family and the time period she lived I found the movie woefully misleading and very anticatholic. First of all they didn’t shave the heads of the condemned …that was for gore and dramatic purposes only. Mary (otherwise know as Bloody Mary) Elizabeth’s sister was fairly portrayed and so was their relationship but they didn’t live and moldy dark cathedrals. On the contrary they lived in light and air palaces and practical all of the older nobles were still catholic…that was the source of Elizabeth’s main problems. She was involved in a romatic relationship with Dudley but she knew he was married and she never stopped seeing him or loving him. In fact after he died she made his (assumed son) the Earl of Essex her favorite. She was mad at him for a time because he married her cousin and head Lady in Waiting Lettuce Knollys the mother of the Earl of Essex.
She did meet the French prince and send him back to france but it was because her people hated him and refused to accept him and not because he was probably gay and dressed like a women.
Needless to say I read quite a bit on Elizabeth I her family and the time period she lived I found the movie woefully misleading and very anticatholic. First of all they didn’t shave the heads of the condemned …that was for gore and dramatic purposes only. Mary (otherwise know as Bloody Mary) Elizabeth’s sister was fairly portrayed and so was their relationship but they didn’t live and moldy dark cathedrals. On the contrary they lived in light and air palaces and practical all of the older nobles were still catholic…that was the source of Elizabeth’s main problems. She was involved in a romatic relationship with Dudley but she knew he was married and she never stopped seeing him or loving him. In fact after he died she made his (assumed son) the Earl of Essex her favorite. She was mad at him for a time because he married her cousin and head Lady in Waiting Lettuce Knollys the mother of the Earl of Essex.She did meet the French prince and send him back to france but it was because her people hated him and refused to accept him and not because he was probably gay and dressed like a women.
L
LilyM
Guest
Yeah but those don’t look nearly dramatic enough for a movie
That’s Lettice Knollys - she wasn’t named after a vegetable. And Elizabeth went mad at pretty much any of her favourites (male) who married - happened to Essex himself.
Someone probably confused him with his elder brother who by all accounts DID sometimes dress like a woman…She did meet the French prince and send him back to france but it was because her people hated him and refused to accept him and not because he was probably gay and dressed like a women.
T
Tantum_ergo
Guest
The historical inaccuracies are insurmountable. The picture is dreck, pure (?) and simple.
And of course when Elizabeth and Alencon’s relationship occurred she was in her 40s and he was 21 years younger. . .and she only pursued the relationship to block France from allying with another power. Elizabeth never wanted to marry. . .ever. (Losing her mother to the block at age 3 and then losing her cousin, Katherine Howard, who had become Elizabeth’s stepmother when Elizabeth was 8, and who was also executed by Henry) might have had something to do with it, since she told Dudley (Robert, later Earl of Leicester) from the time that she first knew him, when they were children, that “she would never marry”. She also saw her sister Mary, who had been acclaimed queen on the death of their brother Edward and in the teeth of Dudley’s (Robert’s father, executed for treason) rebellion which attempted to put Lady Jane Grey on the throne (Jane being married to Robert’s older brother–both of these two being executed as well despite being innocent and under 18 at the time), lose her (Mary’s) popularity when Mary married the Spanish King Philip.
And let’s not forget Elizabeth’s own near seduction–at the tender age of 13–by still another stepmother’s new husband (Katherine Parr, last–and surviving- wife of Henry, who married Thomas Seymour, lord Admiral, brother of Jane, third wife of Henry and thus uncle to the heir, Edward–less than 3 months after the death of Henry). On Katherine’s death in childbirth, Thomas plotted to marry Elizabeth (and was executed). While Katherine was pregnant, Thomas attempted to seduce the 13 year old Elizabeth. The shocks to Elizabeth’s nervous system, at 3, 8, and 13, the power of an able brain which observed her sister’s fall from grace when Elizabeth was barely 20, the strains of being kept in captivity due to outside machinations to put Elizabeth on the throne in place of Mary several times in Mary’s 5 year reign–and then finally, at age 25, Elizabeth’s accession from “prisoner in the tower” to “Queen of this realm”–with no ‘husband’ who would thus be an ‘overlord’ to her–produced a being who, love or hate her, was not some celluloid late 20th century celeb or yet some revisionist historian’s ‘vision’, but a complicated product of her time, with many good and many ‘bad’ qualities.
And of course when Elizabeth and Alencon’s relationship occurred she was in her 40s and he was 21 years younger. . .and she only pursued the relationship to block France from allying with another power. Elizabeth never wanted to marry. . .ever. (Losing her mother to the block at age 3 and then losing her cousin, Katherine Howard, who had become Elizabeth’s stepmother when Elizabeth was 8, and who was also executed by Henry) might have had something to do with it, since she told Dudley (Robert, later Earl of Leicester) from the time that she first knew him, when they were children, that “she would never marry”. She also saw her sister Mary, who had been acclaimed queen on the death of their brother Edward and in the teeth of Dudley’s (Robert’s father, executed for treason) rebellion which attempted to put Lady Jane Grey on the throne (Jane being married to Robert’s older brother–both of these two being executed as well despite being innocent and under 18 at the time), lose her (Mary’s) popularity when Mary married the Spanish King Philip.
And let’s not forget Elizabeth’s own near seduction–at the tender age of 13–by still another stepmother’s new husband (Katherine Parr, last–and surviving- wife of Henry, who married Thomas Seymour, lord Admiral, brother of Jane, third wife of Henry and thus uncle to the heir, Edward–less than 3 months after the death of Henry). On Katherine’s death in childbirth, Thomas plotted to marry Elizabeth (and was executed). While Katherine was pregnant, Thomas attempted to seduce the 13 year old Elizabeth. The shocks to Elizabeth’s nervous system, at 3, 8, and 13, the power of an able brain which observed her sister’s fall from grace when Elizabeth was barely 20, the strains of being kept in captivity due to outside machinations to put Elizabeth on the throne in place of Mary several times in Mary’s 5 year reign–and then finally, at age 25, Elizabeth’s accession from “prisoner in the tower” to “Queen of this realm”–with no ‘husband’ who would thus be an ‘overlord’ to her–produced a being who, love or hate her, was not some celluloid late 20th century celeb or yet some revisionist historian’s ‘vision’, but a complicated product of her time, with many good and many ‘bad’ qualities.
R
rayne100
Guest
I keep seeing posters saying this in an anti-catholic movie…
umm DUH! Elizabeth I was not catholic and in fact fought against her Catholic cousin for many years regarding the reign of her country…of course it would be anti catholic…
umm DUH! Elizabeth I was not catholic and in fact fought against her Catholic cousin for many years regarding the reign of her country…of course it would be anti catholic…
P
patg
Guest
In case anyone isn’t aware of it, the web site www.imdb.com (Internet Movie Database) contains a vast amount of information about almost any movie (plot, reviews, characters, cast, trivia, goofs, etc)
M
mommyof4
Guest
Well, they made many of the Catholics on there look pretty evil.
R
rayne100
Guest
And I’m sure that that is how they felt at the time, however, I am sure that the anglicans didn’t smell like roses either.
Keep in mind that that the catholic church has had some pretty corrupt leaders in the past. That is not to say that the church was to blame, but those people did help to give the church a bad name at that time.
- Status