I would like, if I may, to pose a small question: why is that we routinely refer to Mary Stuart, also known as Queen Mary I of Scotland, as Mary, Queen of Scots? We don’t adopt this slightly quaint style of nomenclature for anyone else – no references to Elizabeth, Queen of English people – at least, not that I’m aware of. I suppose it is simply that it is quite a euphonious title and it has stuck – it may also help to distinguish between Mary Stuart and her regal contemporary Mary Tudor (she of cocktail fame). And, of course, it is an equally good title for books and films about said royal personage, of which there have been many. Along comes another in the form of Josie Rourke’s (yes, you guessed it) Mary Queen of Scots.
The film is, of course, set back in the days when the dangers to the life of a regal personage extended far beyond going out for a drive without putting your seat-belt on: this is the middle of the sixteenth century, with religious war threatening to consume Great Britain. To be honest, the political situation this film deals with is extremely complex, and it only really makes a vague attempt at actually explaining it in detail. On the throne of England is Queen Elizabeth I (English, Protestant, played by someone from Australia), who in order to maintain her authority and independence has decided she cannot marry or produce a child. This is a matter of no small concern for the nobles of England (Protestant), as should the queen die without issue the throne will go to Mary I of Scotland (French, Catholic, played by someone from Ireland). (The two queens are actually cousins, but have never met.) It is decided that, in order to stop Mary from building up her power-base, her rule will be destabilised and she will be kept under control. Naturally, Mary herself has other ideas about this.
I’m only making the vaguest stab at explaining the premise of this movie, partly because it is, as I say, such a complex and subtle situation. There is also the fact that I suspect a large chunk of the sort of people who go to a film like Mary Queen of Scots are ones who… who can I put this without sounding too patronising?… don’t necessarily care that much about the story. They go to a lavish costume drama for the frocks and the language and the comforting sense of knowing more or less what’s going to happen (and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with this; it’s one of the pleasures of genre, after all). And it’s also a fact that anyone with a modest grounding in British history sort-of knows the rough outline of Mary I’s story anyway: came to power, got married and had a baby (thus threatening the Protestant settlement in England), various disputed shenanigans, one dead husband, forced to flee to England and Elizabeth’s protection, nearly twenty years under house arrest, charges (possibly trumped up) of stirring dissent against her cousin, chopping block. Along the way some guy called Rizzo meets a sticky end.
It is a rollicking, if slightly tragic story, and it would be great to see it properly done justice in a big movie, with the details filled in and the characters brought to some semblance of life. However, Mary Queen of Scots is not that movie. You can’t fault its ambition, but even though it mostly limits itself to the period between 1560 and 1567, it still struggles to accommodate all the details without feeling rather rushed and busy. The preponderance of dour bearded men standing around glowering darkly probably doesn’t help much.
Neither does the fact that the director seems to have other things on her mind than simply telling the history, or even just the story. ‘The perfect story for our time!’ declares the publicity for this movie, and I don’t think it’s just because it’s about the female leaders of England and Scotland not getting on. No, I suspect we are being invited to infer that this is a story revealing important universal truths about the treatment of powerful women. The film certainly seems to have a few agendas on the go – both the royal courts in the film seem improbably multi-ethnic (don’t set light to that torch just yet: I’m fully aware that in this period Britain was more diverse than has often been depicted, I’m only saying that the Countess of Shrewsbury wasn’t Chinese), while the implication seems to be that if Mary and Elizabeth had been left to sort it all about between themselves, without having to worry about men going on about the succession and the papacy and a woman’s place and so on, everything would have ended much more happily. (The film supports this by the contrivance of the kind of face-to-face meeting between the two women that there is no historical evidence for.) The men are cruel, or weak, or occasionally both; both queens are to some extent presented as victims. Well, it’s a coherent thesis, I suppose, I’m just not sure quite how well it serves or is served by this particular piece of history.
However, this is not to say that this is an entirely unrewarding movie. It is something of a truism to say that here in the UK we do this sort of thing rather well, and all the frocks and stretches of rolling countryside and surprising hairstyles are present and correct. The acting is also perfectly acceptable – although, in what’s undoubtedly the big showy title role, Saoirse Ronan doesn’t quite achieve full lift-off in the manner you might expect given her reputation. She is good, but not great. Rather surprisingly, the more impressive performance comes from Margot Robbie as the increasingly ravaged Elizabeth. She gets much less screen time and the film does not favour her to nearly the same extent, but she manages to bring something new to her portrayal of this most over-exposed of monarchs.
There is also a degree of fun to be had amongst the supporting cast, which is packed with solid character actors. Guy Pearce turns up as William Cecil, and Simon Russell Beale makes a cameo as (presumably) one of his own ancestors. David Tennant, who has been issued with a fake beard of such luxuriance it could probably conceal a herd of Highland cattle, is on barn-storming form as the zealous preacher John Knox.
So all in all this is still a reasonably substantial movie, it’s just that the various elements never quite cohere into something great. This story is probably just too involved to be brought to the screen without a judicious degree of editing taking place; trying to do the whole thing, while at the same time attempting to insert a contemporary metaphor, was probably never going to produce something entirely satisfactory. Some very good individual elements, though.
No Chic. Just Geek. 