Title: The Other Boleyn Girl
Running Time: 115 min.
Cast: Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Eric Bana, Jim Sturgess
Director: Justin Chadwick
Producers: Alison Owen, Scott Rudin
Screenwriters: Peter Morgan, Philippa Gregory
Music: Paul Cantelon
Editors: Paul Knight, Carol Littleton
Genre: Drama/ History/ Romance
Cinematography: Kieran McGuigan
Distributor: Universal Pictures International
Location: England, UK
Technical Assessment: * * * 1/2
Moral Assessment: ● ● ●
CINEMA Rating: For viewers 18 up
In The Other Boleyn Girl, Catherine of Aragon (Ana Torrent), wife of Henry VIII (Eric Bana), delivers a still born son. The disappointed king will soon be visiting the Boleyns and intend to go hunting at their estate. Noting Henry's frustration about not having a male heir to the throne, Sir Thomas (Mark Rylance)--father of Anne (Natalie Portman) and Mary Boleyn (Scarlett Johansson)--and the Duke of Norfolk (David Morrissey), the girls' uncle, take advantage of this to hatch a plan esconcing Anne as Henry's mistress, against the will of their mother, Lady Elizabeth Boleyn (Kristin Scott Thomas). Anne relishes the idea, but it is her plainer, younger and newly-wed sister Mary who catches the fancy of Henry as she treats his wound sustained a hunting mishap. To have easy access to Mary, Henry appoints her as one of Catherine's ladies-in-waiting, and her husband William Carey (Benedict Cumberbatch) to the king's court. Now Henry's mistress, Mary becomes pregnant, but her delicate pregnancy requires bed rest, frustrating Henry's attempts at further sexual intimacy. Sir Thomas and the Duke of Norfolk seize the opportunity to position Anne once more as the royal seductress, a role Anne plays with uncanny, almost diabolical determination. She withholds sexual favors from Henry and manipulates him, banishing her own sister Mary who has given birth to Henry's son, and egging Henry on to divorce Catherine, promising she would give herself to him once she herself sits as queen beside the king. The bewitched king bows to Anne's every wish, to the extent of breaking away from the Catholic Church which wouldn't allow divorce.
Don't look for footnotes to history in The Other Boleyn Girl, as it is historical fiction, based on a novel by Philippa Gregory. As the title connotes, it's about Mary, Anne's unassuming sister, and indeed it is Mary's story for in the end the person who turns out to be heir to Henry's throne is Anne's daughter Elizabeth, who was left to Mary's care and nurture from infancy at Anne's death. Johansson enfleshes Mary credibly, making another era come to life, while Portman disturbingly comes across as a 21st century girl in medieval costume. Portman's actor persona comes through conspicuously, overshadowing the Anne character--if this is intentional on the part of the director, it is certainly a big mistake, weakening the authentic appeal of the movie. The proper make-up, or simply erasing Portman's eyebrows might have made the decisive difference--remember Kate Blanchett in Elizabeth, the Golden Age? The supporting cast is good--with Torrent as Catherine and Thomas as Lady Elizabeth lending their thespian stamp to the movie. Disciplined cinematography allows the audience sweeping vistas of the English countryside while keeping the bedroom intimacy discreet, and the gore flow at beheadings down to an inoffensive minimum.
While The Other Boleyn Girl is but one imaginative novelist’s version of what might have really happened at Henry VIII’s court, it nonetheless opens the discussion table to a lot of worthwhile topics, four of which are: the value of women in those times (daughters practically traded for royal favors by power-hungry fathers and uncles); the regard for male heirs (implying that females are second class citizens, and condoning the illicit desires of a monarch desperate for a son); what ambition and burning greed does to the conscience (when Henry refuses to sleep with her anymore, and she suffers a miscarriage, Anne schemes to conceal the miscarriage from Henry and pleads with her own brother to bed her, hoping for a son, therefor a male heir, to come from the incestuous union); and the abuse of power by a king (Henry defies everybody and makes Mary, a married woman, his mistress, and breaks with the Catholic Church in order to marry Anne). All in all it is an entertaining retelling of the scandalous Henry-Anne affair, but the depiction of a sympathetic Henry makes it subject to misinterpratation by young, impressionable minds.
