What a strange hybrid The Golden Age is: a sequel, a costume fantasy, a romantic melodrama, a CGI war spectacular, a puzzling celebration of beauty over substance. It’s sort of an historical epic, although it doesn’t seem to care much about historical accuracy. If anything, it recasts the Anglo-Spanish War as a battle between superheroes (ie: British Protestants) and villains (ie: Catholics, particularly of the Spanish variety), with the former’s only impediment to success the pesky distractions of romantic rejection.
The meat of the film is the mutual but unequal admiration shared by Queen Elizabeth I (Cate Blanchett, reprising her Oscar-nominated role from 1998 film Elizabeth) and explorer/pirate/raconteur Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen). (As far as I can tell, there’s no evidence that a personal relationship between Raleigh and the Queen ever developed, although Elizabeth did regularly sponsor his adventures.) In the film’s opening scenes, the Queen’s handlers tell her she’ll be less susceptible to threats to the throne (coming primarily from her imprisoned cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, who is not-so-secretly conspiring with the king of Spain) if she gets herself a husband and a baby. Raleigh shows up at the palace one day to present the Queen with tobacco from the newly-christened Virginia, and coincidentally walks right into an ensuing parade of suitors. He is the only man who earns a return invitation.
The unshaven Raleigh leaves his pirate boots on when he comes calling on the Queen, and as this rare specimen of man swaggers through the cavernous palace halls, bodices rip open on their own. Though conscious of the fact that the glorified pirate is not exactly marriage material, Elizabeth is smitten–so much so, that she allows herself to mistake Raleigh’s interest in her pocketbook for a romantic interest in her person. Raleigh humors Elizabeth in public, but privately betrays her affections. Though advisers keep warning that the situation with Spain is coming to a head, Elizabeth is increasingly, blindly focused on her all-consuming crush. The idea that the most powerful woman in the Western world could make it to her early 50s with her virginity proudly intact, only to become so besotted with a man that she lets crucial matters of international relations fall by the way side, is the first of the film’s many leaps of faith.
Another is, well, the question of faith.
In The Golden Age, Catholicism is to Spain what superpowers are to the Brotherhood of Mutants: it’s protection, it’s something to protect, and, to “bastard usurpers” like Elizabeth and her Protestant court, it’s something to be suspicious of. Catholics in The Golden Age are mostly nameless, shadowy operatives (one of the the film’s lead villains, played by Rhys Ifans, is referred to simply as The Jesuit), usually seen performing archaic rituals and plotting assassinations in darkened basements with ominous score on the soundtrack. The Golden Age plays out in a very binary, comic-book reminiscent universe, in which Spain isn’t merely a sovereign nation pursing interests in conflict to that of Britain–the country as a whole is a supernatural embodiment of evil.
Though her childish crushes and petty grudges take up the bulk of the film, eventually the middle-aged Virgin Queen dons a full suit of armor and a killer set of mile-long flame-red hair extensions, climbs upon a white steed, and rededicates her life and soul to the defense of Britain. But at this point, Elizabeth’s emotional immaturity has been the focus of the narrative for so long that the film’s late-inning transition into pure spectacle falls far flatter than it should. The film hits its absolute peak of absurdist pleasure with Elizabeth on that horse, and the rest plays out like the last 20 minutes of a Busby Berkeley film: with narrative and emotional stakes obliterated, we’re treated to a meaningless parade of CGI explosions and really, really cool headdresses. The Queen is able to bounce from emotional devastation to patriotic warmongering with a flick of a switch; for the rest of us, the transition may not be as easy.
