ITALY: Cate Blanchett's "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" premieres in Rome

Queen Elizabeth I returns to the big screen with Shekhar Kapur's "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" - a film that focuses on the period when Protestant England's power posed a major threat to Catholic Spain's agenda of global domination. Some critics in the United States rated it as "an inferior follow-up" to the first film ten years ago and "an unholy mixture of the banal and the bombastic" but for Cate Blanchett, who reprises the character of Queen Elizabeth I, the film succeeded in combining twin themes into a smooth narrative: religion and the struggles facing a woman of power. "I think that's what I found, probably the singular challenge was because the first film exists so entirely in its own right, and obviously did not lend itself to a sequel, it was a real challenge to not refer to it, but yet not create any reaction to it. And so just let this particular story emerge. So that even if you hadn't seen the first film, this exists also in its own right. So a bit, yeah it was important for me - on a prosaic level it was important to me, because yes you have a very popular film about a holy war but in the end, there is this kernel of this woman facing a modern dilemma which is the ageing process and how isolated she was within that," said Blanchett who confirmed media reports that it was film director Shekhar Kapur and co-star Geoffrey Rush who managed to convince her to change her mind about playing the same role ten years on. Blanchett, along with Rush and Kapur, spoke to journalists on Friday (October 19) in Rome where the film is making its world premiere. Academy Award winner Rush returns to his role as Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth's mentor and "spymaster." In the film, Rush's character evolves from being a powerful mentor into an ageing man battling self-doubt. "And so in the second film, that function was no longer required because the queen was in a position of very assured power and going through her own problems. So rather seeing more of him trying to attempt to keep her on this pedestal, a dramatic sub-plot was created where we got intrigued by the idea of what would happen to Walsingham if he experienced great self-doubt or betrayal from within his own family. And the family line is quite interesting because that's the only time you move away from the power bases in Spain or Whitehall and you actually get a glimpse of domestic life," said Rush whose role in the last Elizabeth film earned rave reviews and an award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA). Kapur says the dangers of religious fundamentalism shown in the film has its resonance on current events. "In this film, in our own interpretation, Phillip (refers to King Phillip of Spain) interpreted the word of God in a very pure way, but which was his way that nothing can exist but his form of his interpretation. And therefore that led to the Inquisition and that's exactly what leads in a modern way is when everybody tries to be pure. On Elizabeth however, on the other side, tolerance is far more complex. I cannot be pure. It embraces everything. And it means you have to exist in a much more complex world and embrace the complexity and contradictions of the world," Kapur said. Kapur, who also directed the first Elizabeth film, played down criticism, saying he had exercised more artistic creativity in the current Elizabeth film. "I don't think it's inferior. I think that people who expect the last film are going to be disappointed because it's not the last film. It's not, as I said. It's a film that is much more mythic in its approach. It's not a personal battle of one queen. It's a battle between good and evil. It's a battle between tolerance and fundamentalism," Kapur said as he made his way down the red carpet later on Friday. Blanchett won a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award in 2005 for playing Katherine Hepburn in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator. Rush's portrayal in 1996 of an eccentric man approaching middle age earned him an Academy Award for Best Actor.

ITN Source | October 25, 2007

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