Film Review. Anonymous

Recently, I have watched the film «Anonymous ». Now I would like to tell a few words about this film.

Cast:

·        Rhys Ifans as Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford

·        Vanessa Redgrave as Elizabeth I of England

·        Sebastian Armesto as Ben Jonson, poet and playwight

·        Rafe Spall as William Shakespeare

·        David Thewlis as William Cecil

·        Edward Hogg as Robert Cecil

·        Joely Richardson as young Queen Elizabeth

·        Paolo De Vita as Francesco

·        Robert Emms as Thomas Dekker, dramatist

·        Tony Way as Thomas Nashe, poet and satirist

·        Helen Baxendale as Anne de Vere

·        Directed by Roland Emmerich.

Synopsis: The theory that it was in fact Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford, who penned Shakespeare's plays. Set against the backdrop of the succession of Queen Elizabeth I and the Essex rebellion against her.

  Review: Anonymous is a 2011 political thriller and pseudo-historical? drama film. Directed by Roland Emmerich and written by John Orloff, the movie is a fictionalized version of the life of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, an Elizabethan courtier, playwright, poet and patron of the arts. It stars Rhys Ifans as de Vere and Vanessa Redgrave as Queen Elizabeth I of England.

Set within the political atmosphere of the Elizabethan court, the film presents Lord Oxford as the true author of William Shakespeare's plays, and dramatizes events leading to the succession of Queen Elizabeth I and the Earl of Essex Rebellion against her. De Vere is depicted as a literary prodigy and the Queen's sometime lover, with whom she has a son, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, only to discover that he himself may be the Queen's son by an earlier lover. De Vere eventually sees his suppressed plays performed through a frontman (Shakespeare), using his production of Richard III to support a rebellion led by his son and Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex. The insurrection fails, and as a condition for sparing the life of their son, the Queen declares that de Vere will never be known as the author of his plays and poems.

The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 11, 2011.Produced by Centropolis Entertainment and Studio Babelsberg and distributed by Columbia Pictures, Anonymous was released on October 28, 2011, in 265 theatres in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, expanding to movie theatres around the world, in the following weeks. Critical comment has been mixed, praising its performances and visual achievements, but criticizing the film's time-jumping format and the filmmakers' promotion of the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship.

I found Anonymous to be a very entertaining film with excellent acting.The downside was the historical inaccuracies in the script in relation to the timeline and the Earl of Oxford's (a real Elizabethan courtier, dramatist and poet) life. At the time the story takes place he was living at Kings Place in Hackney, not in a mansion near the River Thames as the film depicts. Oxford, played in middle age by Rhys Ifans also refers to 'Brooke House' which was the name of Kings Place only after his death when his widow sold it to Fulke Greville, later Lord Brooke.
I can't say that I am agree with the version of the film, but the idea, the acrors and the costumes are great! It’s really worth watching!