Leave it to a German to blitzkrieg the Immortal Bard and the Virgin Queen in one sitting.
Roland Emmerich’s “Anonymous” is a generally sober-minded legitimizing of a couple of the Elizabethan Era’s most fervently held conspiracy theories: that Elizabeth I, far from being a Virgin Queen, had a child or children, and that the commoner William Shakespeare could not have written the glorious plays attributed to him.
It’s all poppycock, built on this widely discounted theory and that scalding, unsubstantiated rumor. Still, Emmerich (“2012” / “Godzilla”), with all the resources that a career of digital effects blockbusters can offer, doesn’t embarrass himself.
He hasn’t made “Shakespeare in Love.” He doesn’t have the touch. But even lacking the laughs and romance, he has delivered an entertaining eye-roller of alternative history, burnishing a substitute Shakespeare — the nobleman Edward De Vere — and recreating the political and cultural climate that would have forced a writer of rabble-rousing histories and comedies full of snide references to members of the ruling classes to let someone else take the credit.
Rhys Ifans makes a fascinating De Vere, a haunted man who shrugs off accusations that these wonderful plays and poems that suddenly turn up, on stage or in print, sound like what he wrote before he married into a family of “No artists, please” Puritans.
He has to hide his hands behind his back as he makes his denials. Ink stains were tougher to get out back then.
Sebastian Armesto is the not-yet-famous playwright Ben Jonson.
“All art is political, Jonson,” De Vere inveighs. “All artists have something to say. Otherwise, you would be a cobbler.”
De Vere wants to score points against the Puritans. For decades, they have had Queen Elizabeth’s ear. And now that she (Vanessa Redgrave, excellent, with her daughter Joely Richardson playing the younger Elizabeth) is in her dotage, there is wheeling and dealing about the future of the country going on just out of her earshot.
Shakespeare, here, is an “illiterate” actor somehow able to read and memorize his lines without being able to make a coherent mark on parchment. John Orloff’s script and Rafe Spall’s performance turn The Bard into an arrogant but cunning fop.
Not Jonson (blandly written and played) or Christopher Marlowe (ditto, by Trystan Gravelle), two other favorites of the conspiracy crowd.
In between the arrests, betrayals, tortures and flashbacks — De Vere’s life at court included writing and appearing in plays since childhood — we see Shakespeare’s plays rehearsed, performed and acclaimed.
Casual Shakespeare buffs will appreciate the ways the acting customs of the day are presented, the ways The Globe theater was financed and what became of it.
“Anonymous” (2 stars)
A ridiculous premise based on a long-debunked theory, makes the nobleman Edward de Vere the real Shakespeare. The background and customs of the day, however, are entertaining. With Rhys Ifans as de Vere and Vanessa Redgrave as Queen Elizabeth I.
Rated: PG-13 for violence and sexual content.
Showing: Alderwood Mall, Meridian, Seven Gables.
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