BEFORE: I decided to include just one more film about the British royalty, but only because: 1) one of the premium channels happened to be running it this week, 2) it's easy for me to link to, since Colin Firth was also in "Girl With a Pearl Earring" (another film I'm adding this week, but with no immediate plans to schedule it) with Scarlet Johansson (last seen in "Iron Man 2") and 3) I did need to add a couple films to make my Memorial Day film land on schedule - this, along with two other films added this week that pertain to my next topic, should just about do it. And if I land a few more sports movies, I can hit the "right" film on July 4 as well, but I'll work that out in June.
Anyway, I began this chain a week ago with "Elizabeth", so I'll wrap it up with a film about her father, Henry VIII.
THE PLOT: Two sisters contend for the affection of King Henry VIII.
AFTER: I'm assuming Mary Boleyn is the "other" referred to in the title, since I'd never heard of her before - but Anne Boleyn, a woman whose story is more well-known, is first pitched as the "other" Boleyn sister to the King, since Mary is (at first, at least) unavailable to him.
But this is a king who seems to enjoy chasing the unattainable, if a woman is married or forbidden, it just seems to increase his desire. But he's king, damn it, so there ought to be a way to justify any or all of his desires. This backs up what I was saying last week, about the royalty and their rock-star behavior, and also the fact that any behavior the king doesn't like is ultimately called "treason".
To her credit, Anne Boleyn understands the king's need to obtain the unattainable, so once Henry's focus falls on her, she plays a high-stakes game of hard-to-get. Perhaps she realized that once he gets, umm, you know, what he wants, he might not want it any more - which is pretty much what happened to her sister. So Anne understands that sex is a commodity, and making it scarce is the only way to make it valuable to the king.
But except for that, it's really a man's game. Feminists may want to avoid this film, where women are essentially treated as property, with plenty of double standards that were designed to keep them down. If a queen couldn't produce a male heir, that was her fault - though of course, centuries later, science would prove that it's the male's contribution to the party that determines the sex of a baby. Also, women were of little value if they had been divorced, or proven to have sex out of wedlock - yet the king was allowed to sleep with married women, so essentially he was devaluing as many women as possible. (some may say "degrading", depending on their point of view)
By today's standards, the behavior seems deplorable - but don't we have a bunch of people these days who denounce what they call immoral behavior, yet are then found to be guilty of it themselves? I'm thinking of some very notable televangelists and also some high-ranking GOP members - some of our politicians who give speeches about family values seem to have no problem with getting a little action on the side. And then there are the secretly gay conservatives - isn't that a double-standard too? It's just "do as I say, not as I do."
Anyway, back to tonight's film. Anne Boleyn tries desperately to produce a male heir for Henry, but it isn't in the cards. This makes her more frantic, more desperate, and it turns out that frantic and desperate women are no longer attractive to the king, so there goes that plan. Did she consider, I don't know, chilling out a bit, for Pete's sake? Putting herself through a bunch of stress over it probably didn't make conceiving any easier.
Finally, there's a last-ditch, desperate solution, which I won't reveal here, but it's such outside-the-box thinking, I don't know how it ever could have been thought of as a good idea, not even for a second. Bear in mind this was a time when there was no in vitro fertilization, no ultrasound, no paternity tests, and people couldn't even determine the sex or health of a baby until after it was born. Medical knowledge regarding pregnancy and childbirth was, to some extent, still shrouded in mystery. A woman who couldn't conceive was considered cursed, because of the "obvious" links between gynecology and witchcraft.
Scary stuff, but the film does end (after possibly the world's most depressing "Where Are They Now?" montage) by name-checking the young Queen Elizabeth as Anne Boleyn's daughter - so in a somewhat unexpected way, I feel like I've come full circle on the topic.
Also starring Natalie Portman, Eric Bana, Jim Sturgess, Kristin Scott Thomas, Mark Rylance, David Morrissey.
RATING: 6 out of 10 charges of treason
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