Starring Rhys Ifans, Vanessa Redgrave. Written by John Orloff. Directed by Roland Emmerich. PG. 128 min. Opens Oct. 28.
Surely it counts as a rare gesture of restraint for Roland Emmerich to set a movie in Elizabethan-era London and not arrange to have the city besieged by alien invaders or mutant ice wolves. The director of Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow and 2012 has classier aspirations with his latest film, a costume drama that purports to solve the mystery surrounding the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays. Such is Emmerich’s dedication to this pursuit that he limits himself to only one big fire, a single deadly sword duel, two brief massacres by musket and a fleeting appearance by a wild bear.
In other words, he’s too much of a vulgarian to ever make a BBC movie, but that’s not such a bad thing. Devoid of finesse but rich with brio, Anonymous is a patchy, bombastic and surprisingly entertaining piece of balderdash that even the Bard would’ve deemed a guilty pleasure—that is, as long as he didn’t mind being portrayed as a fraud, a blackmailer, a possible murderer and, worst of all, an actor.
According to Anonymous, the true author of Hamlet and Macbeth was nobleman Edward De Vere, played here in his older days by Rhys Ifans and Jamie Campbell Bower in his more virile ones. Concealing his identity with the help of playwright Ben Jonson (Sebastian Armesto) and the buffoonish Will Shakespeare (Rafe Spall), De Vere uses his plays and poems both as a means for creative expression and as a weapon against his rivals in the court, especially his father-in-law, William Cecil (David Thewlis), the man who scuppered De Vere’s earlier romance with the not-so-virginal Queen Elizabeth (Vanessa Redgrave).
The plot’s pile-up of conspiracies, intrigues and secret pregnancies is worthier of a Mexican telenovela than the stage of the Globe Theatre. And for all the allusions to the Bard’s greatest works, there’s hardly a speck of poetry to be found here. Still, Emmerich’s showman instincts serve him (and us) well until his endeavour runs short on bluster in the final act.
