"The Virgin Queen?"
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What You Need To Know:
The religious left extremists and atheist totalitarians who have taken over the world just cannot imagine that anyone could ever be a virgin their whole life. Thus, the creators behind the new movie ELIZABETH envision a Queen Elizabeth I, the long-reigning Virgin Queen of 16th Century England, as a woman who must give up her young lover for the good of England. Queen Elizabeth, played by Cate Blanchett, decides she must remain unmarried in order to protect herself and help her country. She also must use the head of her secret service to smoke out some traitors and assassinate another queen in Scotland.
This R-rated movie contains excessive violence, sexual content and nudity. Despite its pagan view of sex, politics and 16th Century religious conflict, ELIZABETH is not without its positive qualities as a movie. It sympathizes with the predicament of Elizabeth who, in order to protect herself and help her country, must focus completely on her public life. The movie seems to honor her decision even as it brings a note of sadness to the story. Also, despite its critical view of some of the religious leaders of the day, the movie does not attack essential Christian beliefs or the Bible
Content:
(Pa, B, C, L, VVV, SSS, NN, A, M) Mild Pagan worldview of religious & political battles in 16th Century England & of famous queen who gives up her private life to serve her country plus some moral & Christian elements; 4 mild obscenities & 1 mild profanity plus one crude sexual remark; moderately gory scenes of battlefield of corpses & corpse of woman killed by poisoned dress that cut into her flesh with excessively violent scenes of three Protestant “heretics” burned at stake, heads on sticks & brief torture scene of Roman Catholic assassin/priest; several scenes of depicted & implied fornication, one of which turns out to also be adultery; upper female & male nudity during scenes of implied & depicted fornication; alcohol use; and, miscellaneous immorality such as Roman Catholic Queen persecutes Protestants, Pope allegedly uses priest to try to assassinate a Protestant Queen, Protestant Queen allegedly gets revenge by killing off treasonous rivals, & noble Frenchman dresses in women’s clothes in one scene.
More Detail:
The religious left extremists and atheist totalitarians who have taken over the world just cannot imagine that anyone could ever be a virgin their whole life. Thus, the creators behind the new movie ELIZABETH envision Queen Elizabeth I, the long-reigning Virgin Queen of 16th Century England, as a woman who must give up her young lover for the good of England.
Elizabeth was the daughter of King Henry VIII, the man who initially sanctioned the Protestant Church in England and who bedded many wives but sired few heirs to his throne. The movie opens with Elizabeth being jailed for possible treason by her half-sister, Queen Mary, who restored the Roman Catholic Church to England for a brief time. Elizabeth has too many friends in Parliament, and Mary’s husband, King Philip of Spain, orders Mary to release Elizabeth under house arrest. Mary soon dies, and the young Elizabeth takes the throne.
Elizabeth’s advisors urge her to marry a duke from France or King Philip for protection, but Elizabeth hesitates, partly because she is still in love with her teenage sweetheart, Lord Robert Dudley, with whom she has sexual liaisons in the palace. She eventually learns, however, that Robert has secretly married, even though he still wants to give up his wife for Elizabeth. (Historically, Robert’s wife eventually died soon thereafter under mysterious circumstances, but the movie never mentions this fact.) Elizabeth snubs Robert, telling him and the rest of the nobles at a party in her court, “I am not your Elizabeth. I am no man’s Elizabeth. I will have one mistress here and no master.”
Meanwhile, because the Queen remains unmarried, traitors begin to plot around her. Even the Roman Catholic Pope sends an assassin/priest to plot against her. Elizabeth, however, has a card up her sleeve – the sinister Sir Francis Walsingham, the Queen’s Master of Spies and protector. Sir Francis smokes out the traitors and personally assassinates the French “warrior queen” of Scotland, Mary of Guise. Elizabeth fully restores the Protestant Church of England, and, in an attempt to symbolize the new order, renounces her private life for the good of England to become The Virgin Queen, with a deliberate allusion to the Roman Catholic veneration of the Virgin Mary. “Observe,” she tells one of her trusted Lords, “I am now married to England.”
Despite its pagan view of sex, politics and religious conflict, ELIZABETH is not without its positive qualities as a movie. Cate Blanchett does an excellent job in the title role. Also, the movie sympathizes with the predicament of Elizabeth who, in order to protect herself and help her country, must focus completely on her public life. The movie honors her moral decision even as it brings a note of sadness to the story. Furthermore, although Elizabeth deals brutally and decisively with those who would destroy her rule, the traitors she opposes seem to be more concerned with their personal gain and their hatred for the Protestants than they are for the good of England and the righteousness of God. Plot developments and character motives are sometimes not fully explained in the movie, however. This diminishes the entertainment quality of this movie, which also contains excessive violence, sexual content and nudity.
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