“…appearance at her coronation is closely based on a copy of a painting in 1559 at the National Portrait Gallery…” – Moya Luchett.
Queen Mary (Kathy Burke) is a stereotype of a typical menacing ruler. The audiences perception of her is manipulated by the settings in which she is placed – her dark, cave-like court, her dress code – black/dark colours, and her ‘ugliness’. However, she is nothing like the portrait in the opening sequence. This shows how the director has changed Mary in order to place the audience on the side of Elizabeth by emphasising the ‘good and bad’ characters in the film.
Norfolk (Christopher Eccleston) is shown as a cliché in the sense his bad character is recognised in a variety of ways. For example he has a mistress; his dress code is dark and has a ‘rigid’ look to it. The manner in which he storms around throughout the film emphasises the authority and arrogance of this character. Norfolk in history is known to have betrayed Elizabeth, and in his appearance, expression and the way he carries himself, the audience are able to recognise this. The authenticity and details to costumes are not completely true.
The costumes for example have been used to emphasise certain characters personality as previously mentioned with Mary and Norfolk. Another character who follows this is Dudley (Joseph Fiennes). He wears open shirts with long billowing sleeves as his character is meant to be the ‘romantic’ one, and his passionate personality is shown by his flowing clothing.
Another generic convention of the heritage film is to do with the sets and locations when making the film and how they are used to create a historical feel. This is true to some extent in the sense that filming did take place in Northumberland and in various castles and towers. However, the ‘look’ of the film was adapted in order to give the film its ‘conspiracy’ theme – the lighting was darker and the cavern of Mary was dark and gloomy compared to that of the light and airy field.
An ideologically conservative representation of “Merrie England” is often viewed in heritage films. Elizabeth, in the opening sequence shows the burning of Protestants and various other deaths, stressing the fact that this was an impressively dark and brutal era. The powerless i.e. the crowd, are shown in dull clothing and their lives are not explored. This film typically represents the privileged classes whilst ignoring social repression. Despite the fact that one of the films main themes is that of religion, it does not explore the Catholic/Protestant topic in great detail. ‘Merrie England’ in Elizabeth is not quite as ‘merrie’ as sometimes portrayed in other heritage films. The film portrays corruption and betrayal throughout, and the main characters other than Elizabeth are difficult for the audience to like.
The film does not explore gender; it is ‘feministically undeveloped’. The young Elizabeth is shown to be reliant on men throughout the film, especially Walsingham (Geoffrey Rush) the “Machiavelli” of her life. She has to appeal to him in difficult situations, and shown to always have male support for example Sir William Cecil (Richard Attenborough) and Dudley. Towards the end of the film Elizabeth realises that in order to gain respect from her council she must transform herself into something much more masculine and a ‘hard’ replacement for the Virgin Mary – therefore becoming the “Virgin Queen”.
The film as a whole is argued not to be totally historically accurate. It is believed that Elizabeth did know that Lord Dudley was married and that they did not have sex. Although the killing of Mary of Guise and the French soldiers, burning of the Protestants and the locking of Elizabeth is the tower is correct, they are all depicted in a much darker way adding to the conspiracy involved in the film. In this sense the audience perception of these events has yet again been manipulated in the way most of these scenes have been shot – points of view of the heretics being burned. The assassination attempts are believed to not have been true. The poisoned dress was taken from Sophocles’s ‘Medea’ and the pageant on the Thames attempt was also invented in order to stress how dangerous Elizabeth’s life was at the time, again influencing the audiences reading of the film.
In conclusion to this analysis of the film in its generic context, I personally believe that the film follows Barr’s conventions to an extent. It is obvious to see that the story has been manipulated in order to emphasise certain themes – the darkness of the characters shown by their clothing etc, but as Alison Owen says, the producers “have not changed facts but manipulated time periods in order to give so many things to attract an audience…” Despite this, the film Elizabeth does follow several of the conventions but in several ways challenges them.
