BBC Film Review - Mary Queen 0f Scots (2018)
There are many far from kind reviews of the film, but this one took my fancy:
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/201...queen-of-scots
(extract only)
Near the start of Mary Queen of Scots, Mary (Saoirse Ronan) arrives in Scotland from France in a rowing boat, having spent who knows how many hours or days at sea. Nevertheless, with her spotless haute couture dress and her magnificent hair-do in the shape of a table tennis bat, she looks as if she has just stepped out of a limousine on her way to the Met Gala. It’s that type of film. Mary’s four ladies-in-waiting – all named Mary, not that the script mentions this – are always ready for a magazine cover-shoot. Most of the men dress in matching black leather jerkins like The X-Men. Mary’s half-brother (James McArdle), goes heavy on the eyeshadow. And John Knox (David Tennant) has a vast beard and double-decker flat cap, as if Tennant were trying to prove that he, rather than Jude Law, should have been cast as the young Albus Dumbledore.
It’s all very fashion-forward, but the effect of this show-offy modern styling is to make a silly film even sillier. A British period drama starring two Oscar nominees as two 16th Century monarchs, Mary Queen of Scots is the sort of prestige production that usually does well during awards season. But this flashily tailored shambles won’t win much except in the hair, make-up and costume categories.
What Mary Queen of Scots fails to establish is why we should care about any of this 400-odd years later. It doesn’t even ask if Mary actually wants to be the queen of England, or whether her accession would be a good or bad thing. Presumably, the British people must have an opinion on the matter, but most of the film is set within the walls of Mary and Elizabeth’s gloomy palaces (Mary’s rocky grotto in Edinburgh seems to have been modelled on the Batcave), so we hardly ever glimpse anyone who isn’t an aristocrat. Maybe O’Rourke wanted to show how cut off the rulers are from their loyal and not-so loyal subjects, but it looks suspiciously like the producers didn’t have the budget for crowd scenes, perhaps because they had spent so much on hairspray.
In the film, the queens meet once, but, in real life, they never met at all - apparently, that's just one of many historical inaccuracies .....
Another TV/Film to file under
Style Over Substance .....