Review of Anonymous (2011) by Brdflicks — 11 Nov 2011

A wonderful looking film with a wonderful cast. But the screenplay--which attempts to jump about in space and time in a Tarantinoesque fashion--never works. And I mean that in almost every possible way. I don't remember a movie in recent memory so devoid of authentic dramatic tension. At points you can almost see Orloff and Emmerich checking off bullet points from their lists of points that the film is trying to demonstrate. Ignoring the Hick versus the Literate Earl debate for the moment, the writer the film really slanders and does a disservice to is Ben Jonson. According to the film Ben Jonson (and Kit Marlowe, Dekker, and Nash--all of Shakespeare's brilliant contemporaries) can't write a syllable that compares to Shakespeare. Certainly untrue as anyone who's read any Elizabethan and Jacobean poetry or drama knows. In fact, there are so many good dramatists and poets during Shakespeare's day the question shouldn't be Why is Shakespeare so great? Rather, it should be how did such an age produce and nurture so many good poets and playwrights?

Finally, the figure of Oxford is meant to be somewhat tragic but the film's silly conceits and stereotypes run roughshod over our sympathy for him The films trots out the same hackneyed ideas about writers that have been around since the beginning of drama: the great writer suffers in isolation, is unappreciated by all around him, and must be willing to sacrifice all to his art. Uh-huh. And Mozart wrote his symphonies on a billiard table in the midst of a billiard match. But a fine film from a technical angle...