Some responses to Mary, Queen of Scots (2018)

Some responses to Mary, Queen of Scots (2018)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2018 (25 October to 1 November)
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28 January

Some responses to Mary, Queen of Scots (2018)

From @JimGR's review :

The true issue is [the face-to-face meeting] is shot more like a perfume advert : bed sheets artfully hung everywhere to obscure the women’s view both literally and metaphorically, gently brushed aside one at a time in soft light.

Quite liked Mary Queen of Scots (more full thoughts later), with the exception of the meeting scene. No problems with lack of historical accuracy, more the fact that scene stood out like a sore thumb. More like a perfume advert.

— JimGR (@JimGR) January 19, 2019

Blimey - talk about being determined to drag in Orson Welles and the close of The Lady from Shanghai in at what is effectively the end of the film* !

* Presaged by the start (and its captions), in musical terms the film telescopes 18+ years into a coda (and more captions).

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 29, 2019

[The review by Jim Ross (@JimGR), for TAKE ONE, can be found here]

Whether this scene is also referencing such things as David Inshaw’s The Badminton Game (1972-1973), or The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982), one doubts that the impetus for including it is John Guy’s book Queen of Scots : The True Life of Mary Stuart, on which the film says that it is based. Between them, first-time director Josie Rourke and first-time screenwriter Beau Willimon have decided to structure their film by having all the politicking that was to come about after Mary’s being taken into ‘protective custody’ - including what ensued by way of investigation into the death of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, and the circumstances in which it happened - subsumed into cinematic imagery that invokes mirrors and confusion, and then, as the shoot-out, resolved by an over-frank discussion that supposedly, at this moment, gave Elizabeth determination (which had been seen long eluding her)¹.

It is as if they have built backwards from this point to determine what the scope of the rest of the film will be (where they make simplifications to the established fact (e.g. the fact that Mary had to break out of prison), and truncate time (such as the that between the death of Darnlet and her marriage to Bothwell), yet with no good reason – as Jim Ross says, the scene feels out of place, and, in #UCFF's view, it is sentimental, and overladen with meaning and portents.


People want drama, but they never met so they could never explain their motives to one another - that is one of the triggers that lead to Mary's death, she could never explain her motives or what happened in her own life before her death.

When in the film she says she considers Elizabeth as her inferior - she would never have said that to her face. And then Elizabeth is seen crying? She would never have done that, she would have flipped. ~ Dr Estelle Paranque [quoted in The Telegraph]


In The Lady from Shanghai (1947), the mirror-scene [the link is to YouTube] had a context, however, of the actual interplay between Elsa Bannister (Rita Hayworth, as the titular Lady), Michael O’Hara (Orson Welles), Arthur Bannister (Everett Sloane) and others, whereas Queen of Scots effectively has none, except the jockeying between the English and Scottish courts², and some messages and portraits passed between the queens (inevitably reminding, as in the case of Elizabeth’s father and Anne of Cleves, that portraits were the closest to photographs, but could mislead).

The film is not quite as lacking in being even handed as this, but the implication is that Mary is a force of nature, and, when confronted with her, Elizabeth has no doubt that she will and must clip her wings

For them to really work out who was who was never, except in the case of the Welles, part of and a vindication of the film that preceded this point, because Mary and Elizabeth have no actual past other than at a remove. A few moments of hide and seek and then seeing each other has Mary say stupid things to the cousin whom she expects to help her such as that Elizabeth is her inferior, and Elizabeth concluding that the qualities for which she was envious of Mary are actually what have brought about her downfall. Willimon and Rourke want to root everything that happened hereafter in this moment, at the point when Mary has come to England to be supported to get her throne back (as she is no longer Queen of Scots, and her son James is her half-brother’s ward), and the result is to highlight the artificiality with which they have differently portrayed the lives of Mary and Elizabeth.

It does not cement what we have seen of this Queen of Scots martyr-figure (King of the Jews ?), but unpicks the joins in the film, because we all know enough to understand that there was a whole world to what went on regarding Mary when she was in England¹, which cannot be sketched in with three captions. (And it cannot be sketched in by Simon Russell-Beale, sounding Shakespearean and, as with Lowden, not of a piece, because we probably know that the demise of Mary was as much a botch as that of Charles I : having seen how the film theatricalizes what Mary was wearing when she died, and then read an account, one marvels at what this cabaret-style presentation is for.)


* * * * *


Other things grated, too. The music of the two courts seemed woefully undifferentiated, as if they did not have different classical traditions. Sometimes, spotting the historic interiors was more interesting than the massed action that went on in them - with the script's uneven modern inflections and idiom (especially in the case of Darnley) just a distraction from both.

God, the script was ponderous : bung Darnley and Mary in some scenery, and have them chat over power-politics for a minute or so !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 29, 2019

Darnley, played by Jack Lowden, seemed intent on rendering the part as if he were Eddie Izzard³, and his lines and manner just grated – fine that the film made gestures in the direction of theatricals and other entertainments for royalty at the time, but too much there was out of register. As John Knox, there appeared to be an element of historicity to what we see, but David Tennant was still ‘hammy’ with his acting⁴, and he is implausibly thrust into the first formal court appearance over which Mary seeks to preside (with the emphasis much on the 'seeking to') and the rough-hewn nature of those proceedings (not least compared with those in England).

Finally, the film is called Mary, Queen of Scots, seems to want to flesh out her claims as a worthwhile figure (if something of a victim ?), and at the same time not very unobviously point up some matters that, then as now, affect how England and Scotland relate to each other. How has the film benefited us, though, rather than our watching it benefited its makers ?


End-notes :

¹ Which, in no clear way, explains why Mary was taken into Elizabeth's protection on 18 May 1568, but did not die until 8 February 1587.

² And wanting to depict Mary as playful, fun-loving and affectionate, whereas Elizabeth simply is not, and largely accedes to what her advisers suggest (and puts an intense amount of trust in William Cecil, who, played here by Guy Pearce, may have been a powerful politician, but gave the impression of being either past it or from some very bygone age - despite Elizabeth's factually being his elder by thirteen years), is the facile contention that the film wants to make for much of its run-time.

³ Not the Izzard who is a pefectly competent actor, but he of his stage-act, lampooning the utility of Le Francais d'aujourd'hui with Le singe est dans l'arbre.

⁴ He has an attentive congregation, but, for some reason, in a tiny church building.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge),

Who is this film about ?

This is a misguided review of The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

22 January

* Contains spoilers *

This is a misguided review of The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

Maybe it’s the season of empty films – they have content and length, but all that they tell you is that : humankind can survive adversity; given long enough someone can be suckered in a huge way; and people can believe that they have rights over another person and his or her life [and that is not only slavery] : they are virtually the plot of platitude.

When it comes to The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), we think that Martin Scorsese might mix things up a bit and confuse, but he gives us Jordan Belfort (Leonardo diCaprio), a character whom, we might remember, we have no more reason to believe than when he tells us that, with the $5,000’s worth of stock that he is offering, we will kill ourselves that we did not buy more : we even have reality change before our eyes, as he tells us that his car was that model, but in white, not red, adjusting the pictures to what he says happened. (Yes, there is a tie to reality, because the credits tell us that the film is based on Belfort’s book, but that never means very much.)

If we skip that opening sequence, when Belfort is adjusting live action to accord with what he says happened, we are simply ‘buying’ what he tells us, occasionally by voice-over, but largely by people, things, events just being on the screen, and Scorese surely gives us a big clue that we should reserve judgement. If not, it is just Jordan’s way, all the way. Think about his first day at work : the film does not dwell on his being told that he is pond life, but instead on a man who can pull rank on the person using that description and, rather improbably, invite Belfort to a bizarre lunch on the strength of the fact that Belfort did something unusual to get noticed in his application. Is this objective reality, or the world of Lindsay Anderson’s O Lucky Man ! (1973)?

The time between then (and the advice given at lunch, including to have hookers, snort cocaine, and jerk off twice per day) and Belfort becoming a broker is passed over, but with the big thump of 1987’s Black Monday to bring him down, though not for long. And then there is the core of people with whom he surrounds himself, one (Jonah Hill as Donnie Azoff) for little better reason as to whether he could sell parasols in Spain than that he provides Belfort with a really good high – yes, natural enough that Belfort should want to set up his own concern, but why with these people, foisted on us as his characters ?

Think back thirty years to Once Upon a Time in America (1984) – or earlier films about the world of organized crime – and that same coterie of those trusted with the innermost details. Scorsese does not just want us to watch what is happening and lap it all up – is that the approach that he intends with Taxi Driver (1976), just that we should go with what happens and think that the actions of Travis Bickle deserve to be celebrated ?

We have Belfort talk shaven pubic hair with his father (and the older man wish that he were younger, although he likes ‘the bush’), and we are suckered if we take him snorting cocaine off a girl’s rear as any more than a parody of possibility, of maybe what did happen all so often in the world of brokerage, but is not told us to prove that it could and did happen, but what it meant that it happened.

At the same time, Scorsese is playing with us, if we want to feel respect for Belfort for once giving a cheque for $25,000 to a woman now working for him who needed the money, if we want to be energized by Shakespeare’s Henry V, the speech that Kenneth Branagh lionized to stir and inspire his troops, or if we want to feel that there is humour in the scene where he learns that his phone is bugged (in fact, nothing comes of that) and, having ingested some arcane substance shared by Azoff and him (for reasons that are unclear), drives home to get Azoff off the phone.

Belfort is not a (submerged) narrator who tells everything to his advantage (e.g. reversing the car with his young daughter in it into a post in an effort to get her away from his wife, who wants a divorce and the children), but the broad thrust of things is how we wants to tell them, such as (seemingly spontaneously) not doing a deal that will remove him for his company, but ending up doing those who work for it far more harm as a consequence so that he ends up with just thirty-six months’ incarceration – grand, impulsive gestures, but just because he can, out of some sense of freedom, of who he is.

Amidst the glitz, the sex, the drug-taking, the nudity, taking what one can when one can*, ripping someone off because one can talk them into what, with reflection, they would never do, does one seek for something else, or feel that one might as well have done the same, if everyone else was doing so ? So is it a film about Belfort’s character-type, or about all of us, if we could, if we dared, if we admitted that we wanted to ? If we have just watched it on the surface, the answer is there : we have dreamed and lived the life with Belfont, and what is the challenge to being implicated ?
Maybe the whole film is a plea in mitigation to the judge, saying how he had never heard such language before he started working on the trading-floor, and showing how his behaviour became provocative, coarse, abrasive?


Post-script

According to Matthew Toomey's review :

Brought to the screen by iconic director Martin Scorsese (Goodfellas, The Departed), The Wolf Of Wall Street has generated controversy. Detractors believe that the film glorifies Belfort’s actions given its many comedic scenes and its lack of a moralistic conclusion. That was certainly not Scorsese’s intention. He didn’t want audiences to leave the cinema feeling better and thinking that the problem has been solved. He “wanted them to feel like they’d been slapped into recognising that this behaviour has been encouraged.” The film’s final scene is haunting in that regard.


See here what others reviews say...



End-notes

* And yet Belfort, until Naomi Lapaglia (Margot Robbie) unequivocally offers herself to him in sex that he pulls no punches in saying lasted only eleven seconds (until he had something in reserve), is on the verge of going home to his wife).


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)