Movie Review: Anonymous

My wife was an English major in college. She teaches literature and especially likes British lit. We have been married for over thirty years and most of those have been spent with me telling her Shakespeare was gay and didn't write his own stuff. This is just to get a rise out of her. Never fails.

Anonymous is someone putting my taunt to film. Not the gay part but the other part. The contention is that Shakespeare's works were written by the Earl of Oxford. He loved writing but couldn't be known as a writer so he recruited Ben Jonson, a famous playwright of the day, to pose as the writer of his works. Jonson had pride in his own works and so didn't want to take the credit. Meanwhile, there was an average actor who could read but not write. Kind of a doofus, a real low-life sort. After the first performance of one of the Earl's plays, the crowd screams their appreciation and demands to see the playwright. Jonson will not take the stage so the doofus actor goes out instead. Some guy named Will Shakespeare.

The Earl is disappointed but goes with the flow. He comes to the performances and secretly relishes in the appreciation the crowds express for his works. It is not until turmoil simmers below the surface in court politics that the Earl decides he can sway the political intrigue his own way with mere words. He begins to write his plays with more political overtones, criticizing real-life characters by distorting them in his plays. His efforts don't quite work out the way he hoped they would.

This film is one of those that I have not been able to get out of my head since I saw it. I spent last night dreaming that my estates were being confiscated and my future was dashed. I was in financial ruin. One cinematic device made the film difficult to follow. The film starts in the present time as a man on a contemporary stage telling “the true story” about how Shakespeare's works were actually written by the Earl. On the stage things cut to the early 17th century. From there, they jump around in time a lot. We see the young queen Elizabeth in one scene and the aged queen in the next. Same with other characters. This was somewhat hard to follow. I think it would improve on another viewing.

This film was very well done. Better than I expected. Of course, I missed half of the movie because my wife, who is convinced that the author of all this stuff was indeed William Shakespeare, was whispering in my ear the whole time about the historical inaccuracies. Still, it was much better than I was expecting.

Grade: A- because I told the wife it was a documentary. “See, he didn't write all that stuff.” Oh, and he was gay.