Sleuth
Directed by Kenneth Branagh
Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Directed by Shekar Kapur
The myth of British acting superiority can be judged in Sleuth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age. One a remake, the other a sequel, both show off high-profile enunciation and subtle imperiousness. Neither movie justifies the time spent. They are anomalies of this unimaginative film era.
The 1972 Sleuth was a lame theatrical murder mystery with hints of homoeroticism where an old man (Laurence Olivier) and a young man (Michael Caine) joust quips over an unseen wife’s infidelity. Now Caine takes over the Olivier role and Jude Law plays the young stud. Their acting isn’t noticeably improved except for Law’s superbly roguish flirt. Caine’s dirty smile and guttural roar merely ratchet down Olivier’s flamboyance. The big difference is Harold Pinter’s script; he stoops to rewrite Anthony Shaffer’s potboiler, merely to add four-letter words. Kenneth Branagh’s direction imitates De Palma’s multi-angled voyeurism, but the trite visual tricks interrupt the clipped language and tense interaction that are British theater’s domain.
The Golden Age is another unwarranted film, adding to the atrocious 1998 Elizabeth where Cate Blanchett played the Plantagenet royal in ludicrously modern style. Blanchett has become the reigning character assassin of contemporary movies.
She’s an Aussie pretender to the throne of British acting and only gullible Anglophiles will accept her affectations. She doesn’t threaten memories of Bette Davis, Glenda Jackson or Helen Mirren as the same character. In The Golden Age, Elizabeth I is more strident than before; pining for Clive Owen’s Sir Walter Raleigh and shrieking commands, yet never making a petulant, punctilious emotion credible. Director Shekhar Kapur repeats his stupefying, flamboyant “style.” He’s made a completely useless, over-enunciated film—an instant antique.
Directed by Kenneth Branagh
Elizabeth: The Golden Age
Directed by Shekar Kapur
The myth of British acting superiority can be judged in Sleuth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age. One a remake, the other a sequel, both show off high-profile enunciation and subtle imperiousness. Neither movie justifies the time spent. They are anomalies of this unimaginative film era.
The 1972 Sleuth was a lame theatrical murder mystery with hints of homoeroticism where an old man (Laurence Olivier) and a young man (Michael Caine) joust quips over an unseen wife’s infidelity. Now Caine takes over the Olivier role and Jude Law plays the young stud. Their acting isn’t noticeably improved except for Law’s superbly roguish flirt. Caine’s dirty smile and guttural roar merely ratchet down Olivier’s flamboyance. The big difference is Harold Pinter’s script; he stoops to rewrite Anthony Shaffer’s potboiler, merely to add four-letter words. Kenneth Branagh’s direction imitates De Palma’s multi-angled voyeurism, but the trite visual tricks interrupt the clipped language and tense interaction that are British theater’s domain.
The Golden Age is another unwarranted film, adding to the atrocious 1998 Elizabeth where Cate Blanchett played the Plantagenet royal in ludicrously modern style. Blanchett has become the reigning character assassin of contemporary movies.
She’s an Aussie pretender to the throne of British acting and only gullible Anglophiles will accept her affectations. She doesn’t threaten memories of Bette Davis, Glenda Jackson or Helen Mirren as the same character. In The Golden Age, Elizabeth I is more strident than before; pining for Clive Owen’s Sir Walter Raleigh and shrieking commands, yet never making a petulant, punctilious emotion credible. Director Shekhar Kapur repeats his stupefying, flamboyant “style.” He’s made a completely useless, over-enunciated film—an instant antique.
