The Other Boleyn Girl
Directed by Justin Chadwick
What does The Other Boleyn Girl, a 17th-century story of British royal succession, have to do with the wildly hyped Romanian film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days? Both movies use two young women to tell stories of political subterfuge. The Boleyn sisters, Anne (Natalie Portman) and Mary (Scarlett Johansson), are pawns in the power plays of a ruthless patriarchy. Their Romanian college-student counterparts go through a similarly dark abortion caper, victims of a 20th-century patriarchal dictatorship.
In both films, the sex-and-politics theme gets easily squandered. The filmmakers can’t decide which is to be explored or exploited. These are post-feminist movies (note “girl” in one title, the captious pregnancy numerals in the other), which means they use feminism to sentimentalize female suffering. But neither film offers humane understanding of what oppresses both genders. The sexual antagonism accepted as a given in the contemporary-set movie is speciously rooted in the historical conceit of The Other Boleyn Girl.
Director Justin Chadwick goes for a romantic effect in this royals melodrama, pouring on the chiaroscuro and sweeping strings under the “love” scenes. But its success depends upon seeing the Boleyn girls as privileged noble victims. No doubt this mawkish post-feminism is a commercial reflex following Princess Diana’s tabloid martyrdom. Due to Sir Thomas Boleyn’s (Mark Rylance) craven political designs, using his daughters as chattel, King Henry VIII (Eric Bana) ravishes the Boleyn household, sexing-up young blonde Mary and older brunette Anne.
Sure, it’s prurient. Portman and Johansson are run through the sex-kitten gauntlet like Denise Richards and Neve Campbell in the neo-noir Wild Things. (Frankly, they’d look better in bikinis than the draping period gowns and tight bodices that emphasize their diminutive stature.) Each girl is a budding sexpot, anticipating romance no differently than their father and pimping uncle, the Duke of Northumberland; both girls also anticipate gaining political advantage. That’s because screenwriter Peter Morgan (of The Queen, The Last King of Scotland) gets off on sucking up to power. His delusions of seriousness result in a PhD bodice-ripper: a game exposed through the soft-core licentiousness of two ripe American actresses being rogered by Aussie Bana, the most boyish Henry ever. It’s a Tudor drama for the teen market—the next film on the Juno syllabus.
But give Chadwick credit for emphasizing moments of sexual conquest (Henry seducing and impregnating Mary, then buggering Anne). This reflects on one of the year’s cinematic hoodwinks: the elided sex orgy of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. Director Cristian Mungiu left out the scene where the two college girls agree to have sex with their male abortionist for fear of implicating them in self-abasement. Chadwick, however, goes right for the irony, hypocrisy and cravenness. Morgan’s thesis is that the Boleyn girls were conscious of political manipulation and that the eventually beheaded Anne (who swears “Love is of no value without power and position”) was better at it than Mary (who is virtually imprisoned during her pregnancy). It’s more complicated than anything in the politically correct rhetoric-drama of 4,3,2.
Mungiu combined post-feminism with anti-fascist cliché (catnip for the art-movie crowd). The critical moment when the college girls Anamaria Marinca and Laura Vasiliu spread for their male abortionist is evidence of deliberate choice (pro-choice?) but not coercion. It’s the same sexual gambit that Portman, Johansson, Chadwick and Morgan use as their money shot (also the come-on in all the ads). What’s most interesting about The Other Boleyn Girl’s history lesson is that it shows how far people are willing to go for status and political leverage. That’s the hidden subject 4,3,2 ignores. It presumes the spurious nature of college-girl friendship and privilege as a feminist entitlement. At least titled-class Anne and Mary articulate the conflicts of rivalry and self-interest. Who’d expect a trashy BBC-style Heritage drama to display more honesty than an Eastern European art movie?
Both these films fall short of David Lean’s 1947 Madeleine, still the masterpiece on the link between class privilege and oppression. But it shows how far we’ve gotten from true feminist principles—and from good storytelling—that 4,3,2’s ellipsis prevents audiences from thinking through a dilemma. Meanwhile, The Other Boleyn Girl scrutinizes human corruption yet angles to heroicize its questionable female characters just because.
Determined to valorize the young Boleyn daughters, Morgan and Chadwick place blame on the adults. Kristin Scott-Thomas gives the strongest performance as the mother, Lady Elizabeth Boleyn, uttering Morgan’s moralism: “When is it people stop thinking of ambition as a sin and start thinking of it as a virtue?” “Letting men believe they are in charge, that is the art of being a woman.” But it contradicts her own powerlessness and ineffectual maternalism. Lady Boleyn’s bitterness (like Cristian Mungiu’s), suggests there are simply commonplace sympathies and bromides to which many filmmakers thoughtlessly subscribe.
The Other Boleyn Girl’s tarting-up of British history pales next to its travesty of movie history. This story has been told several times before: Anne of the Thousand Days clarified Henry and Anne’s sexual gamesmanship, A Man for All Seasons gave lucid, intellectual suspense to Henry breaking away from the Pope to establish the Church of England—and chopping off heads to do so. Those films had more gravitas plus sumptuous histrionics. Portman, Johansson and Bana may be hot, but they can’t light a match next to the emotional fireworks of Richard Burton, Genevieve Bujold, Paul Scofield, Vanessa Redgrave and Robert Shaw—images of pride, sex, foolishness, vanity and heroism that still burn in the memory.
Directed by Justin Chadwick
What does The Other Boleyn Girl, a 17th-century story of British royal succession, have to do with the wildly hyped Romanian film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days? Both movies use two young women to tell stories of political subterfuge. The Boleyn sisters, Anne (Natalie Portman) and Mary (Scarlett Johansson), are pawns in the power plays of a ruthless patriarchy. Their Romanian college-student counterparts go through a similarly dark abortion caper, victims of a 20th-century patriarchal dictatorship.
In both films, the sex-and-politics theme gets easily squandered. The filmmakers can’t decide which is to be explored or exploited. These are post-feminist movies (note “girl” in one title, the captious pregnancy numerals in the other), which means they use feminism to sentimentalize female suffering. But neither film offers humane understanding of what oppresses both genders. The sexual antagonism accepted as a given in the contemporary-set movie is speciously rooted in the historical conceit of The Other Boleyn Girl.
Director Justin Chadwick goes for a romantic effect in this royals melodrama, pouring on the chiaroscuro and sweeping strings under the “love” scenes. But its success depends upon seeing the Boleyn girls as privileged noble victims. No doubt this mawkish post-feminism is a commercial reflex following Princess Diana’s tabloid martyrdom. Due to Sir Thomas Boleyn’s (Mark Rylance) craven political designs, using his daughters as chattel, King Henry VIII (Eric Bana) ravishes the Boleyn household, sexing-up young blonde Mary and older brunette Anne.
Sure, it’s prurient. Portman and Johansson are run through the sex-kitten gauntlet like Denise Richards and Neve Campbell in the neo-noir Wild Things. (Frankly, they’d look better in bikinis than the draping period gowns and tight bodices that emphasize their diminutive stature.) Each girl is a budding sexpot, anticipating romance no differently than their father and pimping uncle, the Duke of Northumberland; both girls also anticipate gaining political advantage. That’s because screenwriter Peter Morgan (of The Queen, The Last King of Scotland) gets off on sucking up to power. His delusions of seriousness result in a PhD bodice-ripper: a game exposed through the soft-core licentiousness of two ripe American actresses being rogered by Aussie Bana, the most boyish Henry ever. It’s a Tudor drama for the teen market—the next film on the Juno syllabus.
But give Chadwick credit for emphasizing moments of sexual conquest (Henry seducing and impregnating Mary, then buggering Anne). This reflects on one of the year’s cinematic hoodwinks: the elided sex orgy of 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. Director Cristian Mungiu left out the scene where the two college girls agree to have sex with their male abortionist for fear of implicating them in self-abasement. Chadwick, however, goes right for the irony, hypocrisy and cravenness. Morgan’s thesis is that the Boleyn girls were conscious of political manipulation and that the eventually beheaded Anne (who swears “Love is of no value without power and position”) was better at it than Mary (who is virtually imprisoned during her pregnancy). It’s more complicated than anything in the politically correct rhetoric-drama of 4,3,2.
Mungiu combined post-feminism with anti-fascist cliché (catnip for the art-movie crowd). The critical moment when the college girls Anamaria Marinca and Laura Vasiliu spread for their male abortionist is evidence of deliberate choice (pro-choice?) but not coercion. It’s the same sexual gambit that Portman, Johansson, Chadwick and Morgan use as their money shot (also the come-on in all the ads). What’s most interesting about The Other Boleyn Girl’s history lesson is that it shows how far people are willing to go for status and political leverage. That’s the hidden subject 4,3,2 ignores. It presumes the spurious nature of college-girl friendship and privilege as a feminist entitlement. At least titled-class Anne and Mary articulate the conflicts of rivalry and self-interest. Who’d expect a trashy BBC-style Heritage drama to display more honesty than an Eastern European art movie?
Both these films fall short of David Lean’s 1947 Madeleine, still the masterpiece on the link between class privilege and oppression. But it shows how far we’ve gotten from true feminist principles—and from good storytelling—that 4,3,2’s ellipsis prevents audiences from thinking through a dilemma. Meanwhile, The Other Boleyn Girl scrutinizes human corruption yet angles to heroicize its questionable female characters just because.
Determined to valorize the young Boleyn daughters, Morgan and Chadwick place blame on the adults. Kristin Scott-Thomas gives the strongest performance as the mother, Lady Elizabeth Boleyn, uttering Morgan’s moralism: “When is it people stop thinking of ambition as a sin and start thinking of it as a virtue?” “Letting men believe they are in charge, that is the art of being a woman.” But it contradicts her own powerlessness and ineffectual maternalism. Lady Boleyn’s bitterness (like Cristian Mungiu’s), suggests there are simply commonplace sympathies and bromides to which many filmmakers thoughtlessly subscribe.
The Other Boleyn Girl’s tarting-up of British history pales next to its travesty of movie history. This story has been told several times before: Anne of the Thousand Days clarified Henry and Anne’s sexual gamesmanship, A Man for All Seasons gave lucid, intellectual suspense to Henry breaking away from the Pope to establish the Church of England—and chopping off heads to do so. Those films had more gravitas plus sumptuous histrionics. Portman, Johansson and Bana may be hot, but they can’t light a match next to the emotional fireworks of Richard Burton, Genevieve Bujold, Paul Scofield, Vanessa Redgrave and Robert Shaw—images of pride, sex, foolishness, vanity and heroism that still burn in the memory.
