Anonymous [Blu-ray] [Blu-ray] (2012)

ANONYMOUS is one of the best & most accurate film portrayals of actual people & events - though license is taken, as in all dramatic renderings - you are likely to ever run across. Set in Elizabethan England, the central issue in the film is a presentation of the "Oxfordian Argument" that the works attributed to William Shaksper, of Stratford-upon-Avon, an apparently illiterate Elizabethan era street hustler, were actually written by The 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward DeVere, a favorite at Queen Elizabeth's Court, who spoke six languages fluently, was among the best educated people in the world, had the leisure time & office staff to write 37 plays, four long narrative poems & 154 sonnets whose life paralleled plot points, characters & locations in the works of "Shake-Speare" & who was recorded in his times as being one of the most accomplished poets & playwrights at Court.This is known among we who care as the "Oxfordian vs Stratfordian Authorship Argument", which is a pip of an intellectual delight - especially since we OXFORDIANS - believe it or not - ARE IN THE MINORITY! In other words, among people who teach Shakespeare, about 90% are convinced a man who apparently could not write his own name penned the greatest literature in the history of the world!That fact, puts us in the delicious position of not only being right on the issue, but also allows us to be righteous about being right! We're under-dog outsiders up against a vested-interest institution that is likely to be brought to the truth only slowly... one funeral at a time. Gotta bring a grin to even the most grizzled visage! Another among many examples people will believe the most preposterous malarkey regardless of reason or common sense: The Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, Santa Clause, The Great Pumpkin & William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon! All of a heap! The more absurd the notion the harder held.ANONYMOUS presents the Oxfordian alternative to the risible Stratfordian yarn in an intelligent & extremely careful & clever manner by blending the details of actual events into imagined fictional scenes. The film does this in a way that details from one or another famous episode in DeVere's fabulously dissipated life are put together. For example, director Roland Emmerich, stages the scene where DeVere comes to realize the political power of the emerging popular theater of the Elizabethan era on a tennis court - the scene of a real physical assault by DeVere on Sir Phillip Sidney that became a major scandal & the first of a series of public brawls involving Oxford & his cadre of thugs right out of ROMEO & JULIET .The holder of the oldest noble title in England & by definition a "Gentleman" was not a "gentle man". The scene in ANONYMOUS shading toward this aspect of Oxford's character is the opening of the "You're Writing Again!" scene - DeVere's niggardly hundred pound dowry offer smacks of the real-life mind-set DeVere had toward Anne & their three daughters. He was profligate in his personal expenditures in the extreme & penurious & downright mean with his family. Edward DeVere may have been a real fun guy & the scion of the oldest peerage in England, but he was certainly no "prince" when it came to dealing with his wife & children. William Cecil, Lord Burghley, took custody of all three girls when Anne Cecil DeVere died in 1588 & married them off quite nicely. Both Anne's & Oxford's death sixteen years later are suspected suicides, by the way.The most important of the film's melded life/fiction scenes is the film's depiction of DeVere killing a servant - staged in the film as a precursor to the killing of Polonius in HAMLET as well as dramaturgically setting up the ill-fated, real-life Oxford/Cecil marriage..Though the timeline of the actual murder - which took place in a kitchen, the victim being an undercook whom DeVere fatally wounded in the leg - is such that it preceded the DeVere/Cecil marriage by four years raises doubts about whether Burghley used it to force DeVere to marry Anne. Four years is, indeed, a long time to stretch out a threat against a seventeen year old boy. But we're talking about "The right honorable Syr William Cecil, Knighte, Baron of Burghley, Knighte of The Honorable Order of The Garter, Master of Her Majesty's Court of Wards & Lieuries, one of the Lordes of Her Majesty's Privy Council and the Lord High Treasurer of England" - then in his early middle-age - who would certainly have had enough eminence over a seventeen year old - to whom he was a surrogate father since the boy was twelve - to force such a nuptial promise. And that the "I can have your head chopped off" reality of Cecil's power might intimidate the young DeVere for forty-eight months - who continued under his father-law-to-be's wardship right up to the wedding - isn't as far fetched as it first may seem.I like the whole Southampton as DeVere & Elizabeth's son idea. Fatherly love - a double theme in the film when you realize the relationship between Burghley & his son Robert is one of the major stories being so masterfully told - explains Shakespeare's gushy dedications to Southampton better to my mind than the assumption the two were homosexual lovers. DeVere's bisexuality was a known fact. However, not all love is "Eros", as the Greek would tells us... "without superfluous moiety." The film's paternal treatment of the relationship hits me as more emotionally likely. As a father I know you cannot have a greater love in this world than your love for your children. It's transcendent of self to the level of "Agape" in the ancient Aegean tongue. "Philos" doesn't cover it. Not even close. You'd sacrifice your life in half a heart-beat for your child. Everything is nothing to that. It's the same sort of thing DeVere expresses to Southampton in the sonnets & dedications. I buy it.The incest notion between Oxford & Elizabeth, on the other hand, is way beyond the pale. DeVere was born in 1550 during the reign of Edward The Sixth - not "Bloody Mary" as said in the picture. The matter is disposed of by Royal records of the King's christening gift to John DeVere, Edward's father & the 16th Earl of Oxford, of a silver chalice on that event. No matter how taken you may be with actor Edward Hogg's tearful delivery of this Oedipal news to Rhys Ifan's wonderful performance, the idea falls into the category of baloney, whereas the affair between Elizabeth & the married Oxford is a fact & could have resulted in Southampton's being their son. At least "kinda maybe". After all, it's ONLY A MOVIE! Not a Brittanica article, or a thesis for a doctorate in history from Stanford. To me "fatherly affection" seems the right interpretive choice. Besides, issue from Elizabeth isn't the only way DeVere could have been Southampton's father. The sexually adventurous sort of fellow Lord DeVere was may have thought cuckolding a fellow Lord would be great sport!ANONYMOUS is delightfully replete with smidgens of unhighlighted details such as bits of referential dialogue. For example, the writer, John Orloff, uses the word "reptilia" - a favorite epithet of DeVere's brother-in-law Lord Peregrine Bertie - to describe persons at court. Or the horrific fact of Oxford's marriage to Anne Cecil - a mess deluxe - by casting a minor child as "Bridget" DeVere who seems to be of mixed race, hinting at the actual real-life charges of infidelity Oxford had publicly leveled against his long-suffering wife as well as brushing the edges of OTHELLO. The film abounds in such wily touches that should delight any astute & well studied Oxfordian & makes this DVD is a real "must have"!Ps. If you're intrigued by the "Authorship Question", I'd suggest reading "SHAKESPEARE BY ANOTHER NAME" by Mark Anderson. Or J. Thomas Looney's (pronounced LOH nee) "SHAKESPEARE IDENTIFIED... " It's the book that started The Oxford/Stratford debate in 1920. Both are available as Kindle downloads. While you're at it, get Amazon's THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SHAKESPEARE & read it. Exposure to DeVere's magical use of the language will improve anyone's English!

"Anonymous" is like a rich opera or stage drama where the narrative, events, ideas, source literature, emotions and word/music architecture yield up endless revelations, discoveries and aftershocks. Like Shake-speare's "Hamlet," Tom Stoppard's "Arcadia" and "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead," Richard Wagner's "Der Ring des Nibelungen," Roland Emmerich's "Anonymous" bestows exponential rewards of poetry, politics, history, drama, music, metaphor, allegory, leitmotiv and narrative architecture."All art is political...Otherwise it would just be decoration." So says Edward deVere, 17th Earl of Oxford, "our Shake-speare" in "Anonymous." Poetry, drama and theater genius. The "stigma of print" for the nobility. Puritan hatred of theaters, plays, actors. "Words, words, words" vs. swords. The "policy of plays." Authorial pseudonyms. Italy immersion, obsession. Greek and Latin sources. Tudor propaganda and chronicles. Spying, censorship, Tower, torture. Succession intrigues and politics. These topics, politics and events are skillfully distilled and woven by "Anonymous" screenwriter John Orloff and director Emmerich into intricate, provocative content.Truly memorable scenes abound in "Anonymous." Our first and last views of Vanessa Redgrave's aged, regal Elizabeth I are visually haunting. The "Henry V" public stage debut is magical, spellbinding - even more so as we see and hear it along with four mesmerized, dumb-struck Elizabethan authors and Oxford. Compelling too is the scene where Oxford tells his wife why he must write, why he cannot stop. Oxford is ... what he is. To his wife, he is possessed. To Sir Robert Cecil (a hunchback, Oxford's Machiavellian brother-in-law, chief counselor to Elizabeth I and the likely puppetmeister of the King James' succession), Oxford is a threat, a menace, an embarrassment. When Cecil vexes Oxford with his last secrets, tormenting Oxford about his career failures and what might have been, the great author's personal disappointment, decay and tragedy is molten. Oxford's earthly release from his obsession occurs at the emotional climax of the movie: de Vere's final words with Ben Jonson who is admonished not to betray Shake-speare's plays, notwithstanding BJ's small view of Stratford actor Shaksper. Finally, the concluding look on Cecil's face after the newly crowned King James lisps his love of theater is priceless, unforgettable.When first seeing "Anonymous," linear processors may struggle initially to keep pace with the tapestry of events, information and time shifts. By movie's end, however, the info matrix fills and key narrative dots connect about "our Shake-Speare" -- igniting our emotions and provoking our intellectual curiosity to learn more. Ever wonder why Elizabeth I would name as her successor the son of her dangerous Stuart cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, she who plotted unsuccessfully Eliza's assassination? Or why the actor Shaksper, putative playwright from Stratford, was not jailed, mutilated or hanged for his politically audacious and incendiary plays and poems? You will not be alone in so wondering. That which flew by oddly, curiously, incomplete from Tudor history books and academic Bard orthodoxy can be revisited, retested, reshaped, savored and supplemented with this DVD and a companion Pictorial Moviebook (bought also from Amazon and recommended highly).Yes, this film will irk fact checkers and historians. Richard III was not a hunchback. But Elizabeth's final chief counselor was. Art becomes political, Elizabethan politics became art.