Review of Roland Emmerich's Anonymous, starring Rhys Ifans.
Anonymous leads Rhys Ifans and Vanessa Redgrave make a powerful pair in epic revising of the Shakespeare story.
Roland Emmerich is a master of mayhem due to his popular disaster movies Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, Godzilla and 2012.
Instead of blowing up the world, Emmerich sets out to explode the longstanding William Shakespeare authorship question with his lush, gripping period drama Anonymous.
Considering that Shakespeare is one of England's national treasures, Anonymous becomes a different type of movie-made apocalypse as well as the most enjoyable surprise of Emmerich's filmmaking career.
Scriptwriter John Orloff (A Mighty Heart) and Emmerich build a fascinating drama around the longstanding debate that Shakespeare did not write the plays and poems that have been attributed to him.
Orloff and Emmerich skip popular "authorship" candidates Sir Francis Bacon and Christopher Marlowe and run with the proposal that the Elizabethan poet Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford (Rhys Ifans), was the true author of Shakespeare's plays and poems as well as the father of a bastard son with Queen Eizabeth I (Vanessa Redgrave) and a behind- the-scenes participant in the disastrous Essex Rebellion against the Queen.
The film's Elizabethan period setting is dazzling, especially the high- energy crowd scenes in the original Globe Theatre.
To Emmerich's credit, the performances are strong throughout Anonymous and equal to the film's dazzling backdrop.
David Thewlis makes the Queen's loyal advisor William Cecil into a conniving villain. Edward Hogg is equally villainous as Cecil's self- serving son Robert Cecil.
Vanessa Redgrave combines regal authority and a passion for life as the Virgin Queen.
Rhys Ifans claims his share of blockbusters including roles as Xanophilius Lovegood in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 and the upcoming The Amazing Spider-Man as The Lizard.
It's difficult to imagine Ifans any more spectacular than his performance in Anonymous. Ifans brings de Vere's passion for writing and Elizabeth I to life with grand gestures and heartbreaking emotion.
He's appropriately melodramatic in a historical soap opera that's larger-than-life at every twist and turn.
Rafe Spall (Shaun of the Dead) adds a new, comic level to the argument that Shakespeare lacked the education and the intellect to write such glorious plays and poems with a slapstick performance focused on boozing and women chasing. Spall basically has fun at the expense of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust that argues against all the Shakespeare authorship questions.
The Shakespeare authorship question has been a simmering debate for years and now Emmerich and Orloff provide a powerful and enjoyable film to help stoke the controversy.
Anonymous provides no rock solid answers to the mystery. Instead, Emmerich and Orloff shake up the idols Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth I for the sake of a rollicking history drama filled with political intrigue and secret love affairs.
One thing is certain: it matters who wrote Shakespeare's plays.
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Distributor: Sony Pictures
Cast: Rhys Ifans, Vanessa Redgrave, Joely Richardson, David Thewlis, Xavier Samuel, Sebastian Armesto, Rafe Spall, Derek Jacobi
Screenwriter: John Orloff
Director: Craig Brewer
Cinematographer: Anna J. Foerster
Editor: Peter R. Adam
Producers: Anonymous Pictures Limited, Vierzehnte Babelsberg Film Running Time: 130 minutes
Rating: Rated PG-13
Release Date: Oct. 28, 2012