BEFORE: Here it is, the start of Britfest 2019, 10 films all about British history, though I have to sort of jump back and forth in time if I want to keep the chain intact. I think this will be mostly factual, except for King Arthur and Robin Hood, who most people believe were never real people back in the day.
How about this for a stroke of luck, I was going to watch this on an Academy screener, since it was taking a while to come around on premium cable. But a week ago I went to the stack of screeners in the office, and this film (along with one other) was not available. It could have been misplaced, or someone else could have borrowed it, or my boss perhaps properly disposed of it, there's no way to know. So, bad news, I'd probably have to rent it on iTunes or cable On Demand for 5 or 6 bucks. But then I checked the IMDB, that little "How to Watch" arrow was highlighted, and I found out this film would be premiering on HBO, the same night I was planning to watch it! And the other missing screener would be premiering on premium cable about a week later, too.
Part of what I've had to do, to maintain my linked chain this long, has been to keep a long list of movies, about half of which I have copies (physical or digital) of, and the other half I don't have, but they're on the back-up watch list, films I'd like to add someday. That means sometimes I program a film into the schedule months in advance, and I have to cross my fingers and hope that the film will be available to me before the time I'm planning to watch it. And sometimes I get lucky, and everything falls into place before I need it to. Only 86 films to go (maybe 6 or 7 that I would love for cable to start airing, but if no channel does, I believe I can see them in some other medium, even if that costs me 3 or 4 bucks) and then I could have my Perfect Year.
Nicholas Hoult carries over from "The Weather Man".
THE PLOT: In early 18th century England, a frail Queen Anne occupies the throne and her close friend, Sarah, governs the country in her stead. When a new servant, Abigail, arrives, her charm endears her to Sarah.
AFTER: First off, the WAYBAC machine takes me to 1704, during the reign of Queen Anne - I had to do a bit of Googling after this film to determine if the lesbian love triangle here was historically accurate, or perhaps a modern interpretation of a 1700's situation, because things can get tricky when we look back on past events and view them through a modern lens. And some people today could have a vested interest in re-interpreting those events the way that they want. There's no real way to know, even to assume that Queen Anne preferred ladies over men, you sort of have to read between the lines of history. She certainly had a best friend in Sarah Churchill (an ancestor of Winston Churchill, but that's not that relevant here) and they spent all their time together, and Sarah had an influence on affairs of state. Whether she just accurately relayed messages from the Queen or dictated royal policy, that's another debatable point.
Sarah Churchill was married, but that doesn't mean much when sorting through history - especially with Lord Marlborough constantly off fighting one war or another. Queen Anne had also been married, but like most royal marriages it was an arranged one, so loving her husband wasn't necessarily part of the picture, either. And she had 17 miscarriages in a 15-year period, and one son who lived only until age 11. Then her husband, Prince George of Denmark, died 6 years into her reign, so who's to say what her emotional state and love life was like after that? It's almost expected that the men of this time would be married, but as we've seen over and over in period pieces like this, their husbands didn't seem to have much taste for sleeping with their wives.
It's a broad generalization, of course, and I'm not saying all of Britain's upper crust men were gay, but sometimes it sure seems that way. The men back then wore more make-up than the women (this didn't happen again in the U.K. until the 1980's) and then the powdered wigs and the stockings - and as seen in this movie, a common parlor game was "Let's throw tomatoes at the naked fop". Somehow back then homosexuality was seen as one of the more refined pleasures, a status it hadn't reached since the days of Ancient Greece, and then Rome, of course, who based their culture on the Greek one. I don't know at what point it sort of fell out of favour again, but it obviously never went away, it just ingrained itself into the British education system - read up on the rite of passage known as "buggering" when you get a chance.
So with all the elite English men all dressed up fancy and enjoying each other's company, who's to say that the upper crust ladies didn't do the same? Sure, there must have been some straight men left, but they may have been few and far between. Meanwhile there could have been scheming ladies and maids who saw sex as just another method of advancement - use what your mama gave you, right? When Abigail Hill first comes to court she talks of being married to a German count, it seems that her father lost her in a game of whist - so she understands that she's property based on her sexual value, so why not turn that around and trade sex for a better position in life? Thankfully, it seems that back then if you found yourself in a bad marriage, you didn't have to wait long for the other person to die of smallpox, at which point you might lose your station, but at least you could take some inheritance and move onward.
This part of the story is historically true, Abigail Hill finding work at the palace and advancing up from scullery maid, and through a series of back-chamber dealings, eventually replacing Sarah as the Queen's favourite and manager of the privy purse, though she had no formal training in accounting or the noble art of writing stuff down. Here the movie takes some liberties by depicting Abigail poisoning Sarah before she went out on a horse ride, causing a disastrous result. In the realy history, after being displaced, Sarah accused the Queen of being in a lesbian relationship with Abigail, by way of a bawdy poem read in court. A case of sour grapes, perhaps.
This is a mildly fascinating look at what life was like during the early 1700's - before there was a United States, there were only British colonies (so unimportant that they don't even get a mention here). And when people went skeet shooting, they didn't use clay "pigeons", they used real ones. Yeah, try to get away with that these days... Queen Anne was affected by gout, which was a real problem among the upper class - the remedy for the Queen was to be carried around everywhere in one of those sedan chairs, which probably only made the problem worse. People back then just didn't know the benefits of proper diet and exercise, it seems. For a monarch to exercise, or do any physical labor at all, that was probably unthinkable. And the maids and servants, the attendants and the ministers were all willing to work very hard to get ahead, so they could live lives of leisure also - that was the goal. Even if that meant shooting down some pigeons, or a rival or two.
I can't say I really understood the ending here - it was very enigmatic. Dumb it down for me, would you?
Also starring Olivia Colman (last seen in "I Give It a Year"), Emma Stone (last seen in "Movie 43"), Rachel Weisz (last seen in "The Light Between Oceans"), Mark Gatiss (last seen in "Christopher Robin"), Joe Alwyn (last seen in "Boy Erased"), James Smith (last seen in "The Iron Lady"), Jenny Rainsford (last seen in "About Time"), Emma Delves, Faye Daveney, Lilly-Rose Stevens, John Locke, Liam Fleming.
RATING: 5 out of 10 burned letters
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