The Other Boleyn Girl

The Other Boleyn Girl

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source: The Other Boleyn Girl

I was looking forward to watching this version of Ann Boleyn for the simple reason that I've had so much fun watching Showtime's version now running, "The Tudors". However, after seeing the movie yesterday, my advice would be go rent "The Tudors" at Blockbuster or Netflix and skip this movie. It's not that Scarlett Johansson is bad as Mary Boleyn, she does a pretty good job considering what she had to work with. Natalie Portman comes up short as Ann Boleyn. The actress who portrays her on "The Tudors", Natalie Dormer, is much better. There really isn't anything bewitching or captivating about Natalie Portman's portrayal of Ann Boleyn, unlike Ms. Dormer's performance, which is everything Natalie Portman's portrayal is not. Dormer exudes the aura of a temptress with sex appeal galore. Portman simply does not. I think Johansson would have been the better choice for Ann. Eric Bana is so-so as Henry VIII. Rhys Meyers portrayal is much more entertaining on the "The Tudors". To be fair, Bana didn't have much more to work with than did Johansson. The main character in this movie is Portman's Ann Boleyn, who seems to miss the mark. The supporting cast was good but overall you should save your hard earned money & wait for this to appear on cable.

I am all for trying to do something different, trying to make some new and intriguing point about this or that... no, wait, I guess I'm not. At any rate, whatever they tried to do with this freakosaurus of a "historical" movie, they completely and unforgivably failed at. I know this bit of history well, and have seen most treatments of it in movies and TV shows; even the irreverent and sensationalist Tudors TV show is a masterstroke of brilliance compared to the pondscum that is The Other Boleyn Girl. This movie keeps developing into ever-greater extremes of absurdity, piling one thoroughly unbelievable scene upon the other. It takes rumors, it takes subsequent history, it takes impossible dialogue and it even takes *rape* and *incest*, and drops it all on the shoulders of Anne Boleyn. This is not only the worst and the least historical account of these events I have yet seen, but also the most offensive and malicious. It is complete, irredeemable nonsense. Why and how the classy actors could possibly stand for this, I will honestly never know. They must have cringed so loudly inside that the sound technicians must have deleted the creaking. There is only one word that accurately describes this movie: Ridiculous. Just one final complaint - an insult, really: How can this compost pile have garnered an IMDb rating of nearly 7? The people who have given this movie a good rating must be ignorant soap opera fans with barely a brain cell and a half to rub together. 1 out of 10.

OK, I will admit that since I am descended from Mary Boleyn,I do have a bit of family honor at stake here.... I knew the film was going to take liberties with historical truth, but REALLY. The Other Boleyn Girl is almost PURE FICTION from beginning to end. Why did they bother to tack on SOME accurate historical outcomes (in written sentence form) of the characters at the end, just before the credits rolled? Just to name a couple of examples: Mary Boleyn was married to William Carey as depicted, and Henry took her as his mistress with Carey's approval as he was richly rewarded. Maybe emotionally conflicted approval, I don't know. I rather doubt it. Anyway, in the film Mary marries a commoner at the end. The film never explains what happened to Carey, it would seem to suggest she is committing bigamy! In the closing "write-over", we read that Mary lived happily ever after with the lower class guy; in fact, her family coldly rejected her because she brought down their status. She suffered emotionally and financially due to the marriage, but was still glad she finally married for love. Other things that are totally false: Anne and Mary did not hang out all the time as is suggested in the film; I understand that serves the plot well so maybe I will let that one go. Can't let this one go: Henry raping Anne before she surrendered to him. That is ridiculous. And Anne convincing her brother to have incest with her so as to produce an heir? That is even more ridiculous. She would never have broken the incest taboo; also, if Henry was really shunning her bed by that time, as Anne suggests in the film, then if she turned up pregnant she would be accused of adultery and sent to the Tower! Speaking of being sent to the Tower, in real life Anne conducted herself with great dignity and restraint before and at her execution, likely she was trying to protect her daughter Elizabeth and better secure her daughter's future relationship with Henry. She was innocent of adultery but kept her mouth shut when she knew her fate was sealed. This is not at all how Anne is portrayed in the film. Cardinal Wolsey is left out of the movie entirely, and he played a MAJOR role in the whole drama of the divorce from Catherine of Aragon and Henry's desire for Anne Boleyn. I just don't see why this same type of movie could not have been made with FICTIONAL kings and queens and other characters--no authentic names. Then it would not be a particularly good movie but it would be less aggravating. Of course, it could not then claim to be based on Gregory's book about Mary Boleyn. I don't plan to read that; there are too many accurate books about Henry VIII that are no doubt more interesting, and I can read about poor Mary Boleyn in those.

Don't trust either good or bad critics upon "The Other Boleyn Girl". It's a serious thing to castigate such a bold work. First of all, this movie is a mediocre adaptation of a heart-breaking novel of late epochs of the English kingdom and the royal family. This work of art(both novel and the movie) has a courage to reveal the unknown reasons of English kingdom becoming less potent with the Renaissance revolution from Italy, and losing the support of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church, accordingly becoming adversaries with Italy. The Renaissance revolution is strongly flowing all over the movie just effectively with the Love. Yes, Renaissance invented the Love; but not lonely. There supposed to be growing artists, poets, sculptors, etc. Where are they? Even, we see the palace of the kingdom, the courtroom, the royal family's bedrooms all like a dungeon. Love wouldn't be existed, unless there is Art. Regrettably neither director nor the screenwriter is aware of the Renaissance flow of the actual novel. Hence the spirit of the movie is lost; and they still try to make us believe that the king of England is cruel and he has set apart the lovers. On the contrary, in fact English kingdom always had let literature, theater and love grow. Beside this failure, this fiasco of the plot; the cinematography and the costume design are stunning. The music score is outstanding, yet we feel that the whole movie is in a mournful silence. After all, we have a touching story with a great deal of melodrama in a sensational way. It seems like it took much effort to get together this powerful cast of actors and their cordial acting. Give it a try; at least it's worth seeing.

Losing your head to ambition is pretty much what we know of Anne Boleyn, wife of the mercurial Henry VIII, who clipped a few necks to get a legitimate Tudor heir. The Other Boleyn Girl details the inner workings of the Boleyn family's intrigues to get their daughters in the bed of the king to secure their fortunes. The relentlessly disappointing births form the boring center of a period drama that shows how the superior talents of Natalie Portman (Anne) and Scarlett Johansson (Mary) can be squandered. The accessories, like those in Sophia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, are visually stunning: costumes, castles, boudoirs are appointed sumptuously and, I presume, accurately. What's lacking here is in the depiction of Henry by Eric Bana, as physically, intellectually, and emotionally far from Charles Laughton's defining portrayal as could be possible. Even if Laughton's part were trumped up, the king who married six times and may have composed Greensleeves (Anne did reject his advances, after all ( "cast me off discourteously") was more than a disappointed baby maker, as neophyte director Justin Chadwick has Bana play it. That Anne was beheaded for adultery is known; when the film proposes incest as a mitigating circumstance, I'm lost to the extent that I'll have to verify this salacious footnote at a future date. The film does acknowledge that Henry assumed a dangerous power after he realized that an alliance with Rome was unnecessary. But then this is essentially a study of sixteenth-century women lost to the power of men, not a history of bad boy Henry. As a feminist tract, The Other Boleyn Girl works. These ladies define their lives by achieving social station in whatever way possible, being reminded of their infamy by their mother, Lady Elizabeth Boleyn, played with an ominous resignation by Kristin Scott-Thomas. The ascendancy of the surpassing Elizabeth to the throne, presiding over the arguably most productive era in Western history, is a satisfactory coda to this film and a supreme irony for a king who thought only a male heir could assure transcendent hegemony. Hillary Clinton's achievements can be illuminated and enhanced by looking at the centuries-old queen who supported William Shakespeare. Perhaps Hillary will join Elizabeth in making converts of obtuse men and enabling women in the 21st century.