Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16025 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-04-17
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.77:1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 240 minutes

DVD Description

Helen Mirren plays the lead role of Queen Elizabeth I in Elizabeth I--a two-part Channel 4 drama written by award-winning screenwriter and acclaimed novelist Nigel Williams ("The Wimbledon Poisoner", "Bertie and Elizabeth" and "Uncle Adolf"). The drama begins in 1579 and portrays Elizabeth--daughter of Henry VIII--during her later years. It exposes the conflict between her sense of duty and the instincts of her heart, her doomed affair with the Earl of Essex, and the struggles of a powerful and independent woman battling to survive in a male-dominated world. During her reign, Elizabeth became one of England's most admired monarchs, having resisted the Spanish Armada and having reunified the nation after it was divided by religious factionalism. Her successes and popularity led to the creation of the 'Virgin Queen' legend, but this drama, for the first time, delves beyond this myth and attempts to uncover the real woman behind the crown.

Customer Reviews

Fabulous historical drama
Films about Elizabeth I are hardly thin on the ground, but this one is something special, driven by a mesmerising performance from Helen Mirren and a taut, intelligent script. The drama plays out in the second half of Elizabeth's reign, which makes for drama just as dramatic as her early years.

Mirren approaches the Virgin Queen as part coquette, part dominatrix, part earth mother, and many shades in between. The result is a portrait that accurately reflects what we know of Elizabeth's fascinating character. In Mirren's hands, Elizabeth emerges like a great lost Shakesperean role. It is a brilliant turn from this most compelling of actresses.

The supporting cast are also superb, with a well-cast Jeremy Irons as Elizabeth's great love-that-never-was, the Earl of Leicester. The performances are combined with sumptous production values that give a real flavour of the times (with some particuarly flavoursome execution scenes).

This is essential viewing. Full stop.

Excellent
Elizabeth is a two-part mini-series about the life and later years of Queen Elizabeth I. Helen Mirren received great acclaim for her portrayal of Elizabeth and I have to say it was definitely well deserved. She plays the part of `The Virgin Queen' to perfection and with Jeremy Irons in support as her lover, The Earl of Leicester, Elizabeth is a downright winner.

There is a mixture of a love story, scandal, humour galore and a few executions for the gore-hungry in the audience. The costumes were amazing, the plot flawless and the script very cleverly written. It will take some doing to find a depiction of Elizabeth that will rival this one. It's just that good.

A mixed production
I should like to comment first on the positive aspects of this 240-minute two-parter on the life of Elizabeth I in her later years. Helen Mirren gives us a fine, gutsy performance and a worthy interpretation of one of our most famous and wilful monarchs. Like many I have grown up seeing Helen in a wide variety of roles and she always adds something special to any part she plays. In this film, amongst supporting actors mention could be made of Hugh Dancy as the Earl of Essex who gives the part plenty of youthful dash and Patrick Malahide is very good as Walsingham. Also, for want of a better word, the `blood' scenes in the film are shockingly well done and if you want to attend a beheading without doing so then watch this film.

The recreation of the set and scenery for the film was a skilful combination of design and cgi and was utterly convincing. In fact amongst the extras on disk one you'll find a fascinating collection of clips showing via a screen wipe how, before your eyes, the original shot footage changes into the final generated film. The extras also contain some deleted scenes, at least one of which could usefully have made the final cut of the film, in my view.

Some spoilers follow so you might want to skip the next paragraph.

The film shows Elizabeth meeting Mary Queen of Scots. The dialogue tells us this is a secret meeting where all witnesses are sworn to silence so presumably the screenwriter's thinking is that the meeting has never come down to us. However, it must be said there has a never been a whisper over the intervening four centuries that such a meeting took place and it goes flat against all the known facts we have. An exchange that is certainly well known to us is where Elizabeth asked, famously, "How high is she? Is she higher than me?" On hearing the answer `yes', Elizabeth concluded, "Then she is too high for I am just the right height." Elizabeth was terrified of and fascinated by her unknown rival. This mystery, which would have been dispelled by a personal meeting, fuelled in part her fear. There's nothing wrong with conjecture in itself, of course, but the episode where Elizabeth meets Mary is included seamlessly into the film as `fact' and that irreversibly undermines the plot, in my opinion. The same strange device (a secret meeting) is used again in the film as we are shown Elizabeth in conversation with James VI of Scotland. Once again there has never been a breath of a suggestion of a rumour that such a momentous meeting took place, behind closed doors, and had it taken place it would counter all the facts we definitely do have of the dramatic takeover that Cecil engineered.

(Spoilers over).

Jeremy Irons gives a solid performance as the Earl of Leicester but to my taste it's a bit too solid (again) and varies little from the stock performance he seems content to revisit in many, if not all, of his films. Also, there's very little on-screen chemistry evident between him and Helen Mirren in their respective roles and this doesn't help the film at all.

In the unlikely event that you haven't seen this film but you have seen the several productions on the life of Elizabeth I of recent years you'll probably be wondering how this compares to the others. I have to say that despite its virtues and many Emmy nominations it's still the weakest by a hair. Granted the competition it's up against that's not too bad at all. For one thing Helen Mirren's performance for all its doubtless merits is not as good as Anne-Marie Duff's in `The Virgin Queen' (perhaps the new `Gold Standard', inheriting such an honour from Glenda Jackson's 1970s interpretation) nor Cate Blanchett's in `Elizabeth'. And, lest we forget, Dame Judi Dench did enough on screen in eight minutes to win a deserved Oscar for her interpretation of Elizabeth in her later years in `Shakespeare in Love'.

In conclusion I think this film is certainly worth seeing but equally certainly it isn't the best of its kind.