This film presents itself as Roland Emmerich's move into cinematic maturity, a move away from the special effects laden films of his youth and into a concentration on plot, atmosphere and mature characterisation. Or so he apparently intended, but by the end of the film I was hoping in vain for an alien invasion to destroy London or Godzilla to burn down the globe...anything to raise the mood of gloom and doom that Emmerich apparently thinks is 'proper' film-making. Derek Jacobi (one of the few performers who actually gives any sparkle to his performances) promises at the beginning to tell a 'darker story' and dark the story certainly is; full of tightly framed underlit shots of lots of men in ruffs and beards shouting at each other and generally being underhand. Not one sympathetic character shows themselves; Edward Hogg's Robert Cecil is a grumpy hunchback who, like his father, hates the arts and wants to put King James of Scotland on the throne (which the film, rather ineffectually tries to suggest is a Bad Thing). Rafe Spall's William Shakespeare is a drunken fornicator who kills Christopher Marlowe when he discovers the truth about his non-authorship of the plays. Ben Jonson is a treacherous swine who is given one of the film's unintentionally hilarious lines ('You know he's illiterate. Oh he can read well enough'). Queen Elizabeth is a senile old bat who has spent most of her reign dropping bastards left, right and centre, which his counsellors alternate between covering up and trying to stick them on the throne. And as for Edward De Vere, the 'soul of the age?' Well it's hard to sympathise with a man who, according to the film, killed an unnamed servant and wasted most of his family fortune while ignoring his own family. The part is given to Rhys Ifans who fails entirely to endow it with any sign of life whatsoever. And as for the big question the film poses, 'Who wrote Shakespeare?' The film does such harm to the Oxfordian cause by piling on absurdity on absurdity that one might suspect this to be a stealth satire.
