Elizabeth

The feature films "Elizabeth" and its sequel, "Elizabeth - The Golden Age", are the Indian born Shekhar Kapur's portrayal of Queen Elizabeth I of England.

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Elizabeth may be called fortunate. As a young woman she narrowly escapes execution at the hand her Catholic sister Queen Mary, and towards the end of her life she and her throne are spared by the destruction of the Spanish Armada, and throughout her life she survives various plots to assainate and/or overthrow her.

The young Elizabeth is determined that the house of Tudor will rule sovereign, but faces three impediments; religious strife at home, powerful enemies abroad and a bankrupt treasury. A young woman playing in an old men's courts, she deftly shatters the obstacles in her path with one blow. Or actually two. With the Act of Supremacy she places herself, and all English monarchs to this day, at the head of the church her father created in order to divorce his first wife Catharine and marry Elizabeth's mother Anne Boleyn; and with the Act of Uniformity she tries to dance at two weddings. She reckons that this new improved Church of England retains enough sacraments to be Catholic, but shorn of fealty to Rome it will satisfy her Protestant subjects.

Hoping that she has united the nation behind her and with new income from property confiscated from the Catholic clergy and nobility that opposed her, she presumes that she is safe. Not so.

The real Catholics aren't fooled and when she executes her cousin Mary Queen of Scots, she's crossed one red line too many. Her enemies set out to punish her, and in the end it is only the bravery of her sailors and the caprice of a storm that sweep the Armada out to sea, that saves Elizabeth and England.

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Despite not being English, or perhaps because of it, Kapur breathes life into Elizabeth. His is not only the tale of a great queen, but the story of a bright and beautiful girl that sacrifices her femininity and eventually her humanity for the sake of the greater good and her family's name. Elizabeth is said to have been the best educated and most intelligent woman of her day, yet in her determination she pushed aside all that stood in her way. She couldn't tolerate those who didn't applaud her and turned a deaf ear to others' opinions.

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In the end, all that was in the grail was vanity. Elizabeth ended her days a lonely, bitter old lady mourning her womanhood.

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Perhaps the greatest irony of all is that in spite of all her efforts, Elizabeth was nevertheless the last of the Tudors. She spent her last days in the company of polital cronies that knew how to manipulate her with flattery, and when she died, James I, the son of her arch rival Mary Stuart (Queen of Scots), succeeded her to the throne.