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'Elizabeth: The Golden Age'

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BY JAN STUART | jan.stuart@newsday.com

October 12, 2007

Poor Virgin Queen. She has all of England in her thrall, a Machiavellian adviser to carry out her dirty work, ladies in waiting to do her up in flowered head-pieces and shimmering green gowns - no, let's wear the blue tonight, shall we? - and heads of state laying exotic gifts at her feet. But when happy hour rolls around, Elizabeth I can't get arrested.

Most of Elizabeth's romantic travails were arguably self-imposed, a case put forth by writer Michael Hirst in the vigorous 1998 drama "Elizabeth." To wit, her suitors invariably carried hidden power agendas under their florid words and fancy presents. Who needs that when you have a country to run?

In this overbearing sequel that reunites Cate Blanchett with director Shekhar Kapur, Elizabeth's chaste resolve is chipping away. She can still eighty-six a preying nobleman with matchless grace and diplomacy. But that Walter Raleigh fellow really is quite an adventurer, and wouldn't it be nice to have a man around the palace these days, what with Philip of Spain banging at the door with his Inquisition and warships?

As reconsidered by Hirst and screenwriter William Nicholson, of "Shadowlands" fame, Elizabeth's isolation could be partially attributed to that 20th century affliction: fear of intimacy. "I pretend there is a pane of glass between me and them," she explains to a wooing German archduke in one of the film's infrequent moments of charm. "They can see me but not touch me."

In the case of Raleigh (a gallantly mustached Clive Owen), just back from the New World, there is the additional concern of his status as a commoner. Advancing with caution, she touches Raleigh through a stand-in, her favored Lady Bess (Abbie Cornish), who eventually assumes her surrogate role with more enthusiasm than Elizabeth is ready to deal with.

This is the Elizabeth sequel that Bette Davis might have made back in 1939, had Warner Bros. and Michael Curtiz had the digital technology and taste for the bombastic that Universal and Kapur bring to the table here. Showing blatant distrust for his actors and their material, Kapur assaults us with almost nonstop underscoring by "Bombay Nights" composer A.R. Rahman (the "Mozart of Madras," said Time magazine), who favors an exhortatory, "Carmina Burana"-style grandiloquence.

All those urgent seraphic voices push the film into the ludicrous whenever Kapur aspires to the beatitude of a Renaissance religious painting. In a gesture of parity toward Protestants and Catholics, Kapur bathes Elizabeth and Mary Stuart (Samantha Morton) in divine light from above as the queen reacts to a looming assassin by assuming a pose of supplication and, in a subsequent scene, the treacherous Mary rests her head on the executioner's block.

The film's fleeting moments of charm and modesty are contained in the first half hour. There is a lovely scene in which Elizabeth lets a German-speaking archduke off the hook after his overbaked attempt at wooing reveals the full extent of his disinterest. Raleigh's offering of potatoes and tobacco from the New World (along with a territory called Virginia, in commemoration of the Virgin Queen) is a winsome history lesson with ominous import for future globalization. Walter, could you pick up some McFries and a carton of Marlboros on your next trip?

As the Queen's clumsy manipulation of Raleigh collides with Spain's bellicose insurgency, the film reveals the claptrap at its true heart. Kapur builds to a cataclysmic battle at sea, climaxing as Blanchett stands "Lion King"-style at the edge of a seacliff, lording over the burning Spanish Armada in the dark waters below. It's a tableau worthy of the screen's great silent era. Silence would be a blessing to "Elizabeth: The Golden Age," which substitutes symphonic din in place of drama.

ELIZABETH: THE GOLDEN AGE (PG-13). Cate Blanchett reprises her star-making 1998 role as the willful, fair-minded and ever-virginal Elizabeth I. The costumes are opulent, the music obnoxious. Stay with the first picture. As Walter Raleigh, Clive Owen actually throws his cloak over a puddle to keep the queen's feet dry. 1:55. (violence, some sexuality, nudity). At area theaters.