Film Review: The Other Boleyn Girl
Period Drama Undoes Itself with Axe-Grinding
The new movie The Other Boleyn Girl presents a flat, two-dimensional caricature of richly complex historical figures, suffering in the process.
There’s probably a fascinating movie to be made about Anne Boleyn. Such a controversial and complex figure deserves a similarly complex film. The Other Boleyn Girl, however, is not it. The movie alternates between sappy harlequin romance and a jeremiad on the evils of men. The actors, particularly Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johannson, do a commendable job squeezing as much depth from these two-dimensional characters as humanly possible. But even the best actors get hamstrung by their material sometimes.
History vs. Hysteria
No one would argue that women weren't treated poorly in Tudor England (or for most of recorded history, for that matter). On the contrary, the second-class citizenship of women in that time is so well-established that the constant harping on it both seems trite and smacks of pandering to its key demographic.
Henry VIII's concern that he would not produce a male heir, and that civil war would erupt as a result, is ultimately dismissed by an ending card. The movie informs us that his female heir by Anne, Elizabeth I, became one of England's longest-serving monarchs. While that is certainly true, the basis for Henry’s concern is not as trivial as the movie makes it out to be.
For the past two centuries the country had been embroiled in the bloody Wars of the Roses, in which kings and princes had been assassinated, some of them as children, and civilians suffered greatly in the process. Henry's own father came to power only after ending Richard III's reign of terror. This backdrop isn't even mentioned, and the implication is that Henry's obsession over a male heir is merely the product of institutionalized male chauvinism. Additionally, on the level of characterization, Henry swings wildly from monster to buffoon, yet remains remarkably flat and boring for such an infamous historical figure.
The other male characters aren’t much better. Sir Thomas Boleyn is spineless. His brother-in-law, the Duke of Norfolk, whose mustache-twirling political machinations prompt him to offer up his nieces as concubines, is a kind of cinematic evil that borders on cartoonish. Mary’s first husband William Carey is a weakling. Anne and Mary’s brother George has no purpose except as a sounding board and as a plot device in the last act.
Anne Boleyn as Tragic Figure?
In addition to reducing the intricate politics of court life to a system of male oppression, it seems as though the movie uses the conditions women underwent in that period to excuse Anne’s behavior. When her secret marriage to Henry Percy, Duke of Northumberland, is forcibly annulled, she is exiled to the court of France, from which she returns vicious and vindictive. However, she earlier indicates that her attraction to Percy was largely about his position to begin with, so the portrayal of her as a victim taking control rings false.
The screenwriter, Peter Morgan, seems to be half-heartedly offering up Anne Boleyn as deserving of our sympathy, yet she consistently resorts to such conniving, backstabbing duplicity that it's hard to see how she's any better than the reprehensible men she's surrounded by. For example, in one scene she seduces Henry in the hallway outside Mary’s bedroom as she’s giving birth to his son. Mary's willingness to forgive Anne and petition Henry for clemency later on is bafflingly charitable, though consistent with her role as doormat throughout the film.
In the final reel, the movie asks its audience to feel sympathy for a character who has spent the last hour and a half demonstrating that she doesn't deserve it. A movie that claims to be advocating for women ironically ends up pandering and condescending to them.
