'Anonymous' suffers from identity crisis
Here's a listless historical drama that screams ... no, <i>begs </i>to be a comedy.
It's titled "Anonymous" and it has been directed by Roland Emmerich, a German filmmaker mostly noted for his big, bombastic, special-effects-stuffed blockbusters such as "Godzilla," "Independence Day" and "The Day After Tomorrow."
"Anonymous" presents the premise that the great William Shakespeare was in fact an illiterate actor who took credit for writing the comedies, tragedies and sonnets actually created by the Earl of Oxford.
The authenticity of Shakespeare's authorship has been the fodder for countless debates and academic fights for a century.
Who really wrote Shakespeare's plays?
That question ranks somewhere between "Who killed Kennedy?" and "Where is Jimmy Hoffa?" as one of the hottest conspiracy debate topics of all time.
Some researchers have concluded that the highly educated Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, would have been more likely to have produced works of Shakespeare's caliber, rather than the real "bard" about whom little is known.
Other researchers dispute this, of course.
Nonetheless, "Anonymous" stars Rhys Ifans as the Earl, whose title and fortune would be damaged if anyone realized he was writing plays during the era of Queen Elizabeth.
His adversary in the Elizabethan court, the Puritanical hunchback Robert Cecil (Ed Hogg), lambastes the arts as blasphemy or heresy. Something like that.
So, the Earl must stay in the literary closet.
A dimwitted actor named William Shakespeare (Rafe Spall), realizing the true author will not contest him, steps forward onstage to take credit for writing the Earl's popular play that day.
He becomes an instant hit.
"Anonymous" opens with playwright Ben Jonson (Sebastian Armesto) being hunted down by Cecil's troops, sent to retrieve Shakespeare's works that they believe him to possess. In their zest, they burn down the historic Globe Theatre.
Then the story quantum leaps five years into the past. Then, using a confusing flashback-within-a-flashback structure, leaps a generation further into the past, to show how the Earl and Queen Elizabeth (Joely Richardson, with Vanessa Redgrave as the older queen) sired a secret baby.
There are political machinations, egos, passions, lusts for power, conspiracies and secrets galore in this movie, all rendered in a magnificently detailed, historical bore by Emmerich, whose ability to mount stories on massive canvasses doesn't help much here.
If Shakespeare were indeed the public face for the Earl of Oxford, think of how much fun it would be if John Orloff's screenplay had been written as a Shakespearean comedy made by director John Madden and the crew of the lighthearted "Shakespeare in Love."
Parts of "Anonymous" border on serious parody, especially Cecil's mustache-twirling gushes of villainy and Spall's interpretation of the Bard as a comical doofus dealing with instant celebrity and extra money - both of which he's ill-equipped to handle.
Ifans presents a credible portrait of the Earl as a pragmatic artist, but it doesn't take much of an imagination to see Christopher Guest (he was the six-fingered man in "Princess Bride") playing the role for laughs as a man torn between ego and political survival.
Here's one movie that could use a line like "What wind from yonder window breaks?"
<b>“Anonymous” </b>
★ ★
Starring: Rhys Ifans, Vanessa Redgrave, Rafe Spall, Sebastian Armesto, David Thewlis
Directed by: Roland Emmerich
Other: A Columbia Pictures release. Rated PG-13 for sexual situations and violence. 130 minutes.