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Anonymous – Art 2/5 Ent 5/5 Worth 3/5

Soooo … this is what qualifies for controversy these days? Lord of the Rings had subtle Wagnerian anti-semitism and racism in it but a movie about a conspiracy theory is the source of infamy? Anonymous is a film that purports Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford to be the true author of William Shakespeare’s various plays, sonnets and poems, as well as an integral political mover behind key events and iconic people. It’s a theory not backed up by a high percentage of serious scholars (Derek Jacobi, one of the few dedicated adherents to the “Oxfordian” theory, is this film’s chorus … who else but?), yet it is a telling betrayal of the effervescent tendency in humankind to credit the mythology of great actions to great men. No more centralized could one find the great actions of the Elizabethan era depicted in Anonymous, than in the person of Edward de Vere (played exquisitely by Rhys Ifans), who’s no less than Bess’s lover, a warrior poet, and instigator of rebellions. Director Roland Emmerich comes just shy of making him lawgiver and pater patriae.

“Meretricious nonsense!” So says A.O. Scott of the New York Times, perhaps unconsciously quoting Sam Waterston as Jack McCoy in Law & Order during one of his finest moments. Yes, it’s as if 2012 and the Day After Tomorrow is finally here, the world is ending, because somebody committed a sacrilege against The Bard himself. The vehement protestations against Anonymous would make you think it’s the vilest tripe to have been belched from the pit in a century, for placing an alternative Shakespeare authorship theory into a feature film. The pious indignity is matched only by those, particularly Catholic people, who lost their shit when The Last Temptation of Christ or The Da Vinci Code were released. I can’t be the only person rolling my eyes at this overreaction, can I? There are many crimes of art in this film, but presupposing a conspiracy theory is not one of them. I didn’t get the impression that this purported to be a documentary, nor did I get the impression that the Roman Republic was restored by a gladiator. Turning to cinema (documentary or fiction) for education is perhaps the highest form of laziness, and I feel no sympathy for anybody duped by this movie. Cinema is not fact, it is a group of artists’ attempt at poetic truth.

Now, to the aforementioned crimes of art. This movie’s wild imagination is not met in equally wild narrative – it’s little more than a juiced up episode of The Tudors. The narrative shifts in time have poor segues. Only halfway through the film does the jumping in time become more easily oriented as we recognize different characters or certain characters by different makeup or different actors portraying them. The writing suffers on account of being too precious in both the macro (the concept) and the micro (the plot thickens towards the end in a very cheap way – this is Roland Emmerich here, Mr. Godzilla / Independence Day, so we of course have in store some hamfisterie passing itself off as sexed-up action and greek tragedy). The hagiography paid to Shakespeare gets a little overboard at times. Characters snivel about his greatness like eight year olds telling somebody their dad could beat another kid’s dad up. Oh, the Bard is good, but for fuck’s sake people.

And yet, I still have to be forgiving of those trifle few errors as well. Emmerich deserves a little credit here, honestly. I mean really, we’re talking about a director, one of whose films was so bad that the South Park guys were going to do it over again shot-for-shot, but with marionette puppets until the studio ordered them to stop (thus it became Team America). He deserves credit for training his camera on a daring and praiseworthy attempt (I only said attempt) at rendering Shakespeare into cinema. The very obsequious films done by Kenneth Branagh and Laurence Olivier are merely filmed stage theater. Franco Zeffirelli pumped out mostly trash. Peter Greenaway’s Prospero was deliciously cinematic and a great example of post-modern Shakespeare, but I can count the number of people who saw it on one hand. Orson Welles’ Othello was a landmark film, and pure genius that is a perfect balance between Olivier’s bowing and Welles’ own egotistical ambition. But of course it was locked away in a cupboard for 40 years, because the gods so wanted to torment poor Orson.

But the only Shakespeare films that gain the favor of audiences these days are ones updated and translated into modern English, or period pieces about the man himself, such as 10 Things I Hate About You or Shakespeare in Love, respectively. The quintessential problem with Shakespeare is that his profound power over English language and literature makes one feel sacrilegious to ‘update’ his words of holy writ. Like Homer’s effect on the Greek language, an entire manner of speaking lived a half millennium after its death because of how Shakespeare used those words. And again, like Greek readers in late antiquity and modern day readers of Qur’anic Arabic … you can only speak and listen in Shakespearean English or the English of the King James Bible for so long before your brain craps out. And there’s the rub: you have to compromise genius to reach more people.

So what was the poetic truth that Roland Emmerich aimed for here? That’s where this film ultimately does fail. Relying on a great man theory vision of history, this is a panegyric for the 1 percenters. The Wall Street barons. The Buckleys of William F., and the Galbraiths of John K.,. Emmerich would have us know that true greatness comes from your mettle, and the true Shakespeare had the highest grade of mettle known to man. Ultimately, it could be seen as a subtle insult to Ben Jonson (played by Sebastian Armesto), who confesses he’s nothing but a satellite in Shakespeare’s orbit. We leave the theater having learned one thing: Shakespeare was great, too great for society to comprehend. That’s deep, bro.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1521197/