Let's get some class up in this joint
Hat tip to @SusanneWhite: Anonymous is a Roland "Independence Day" Emmerich film about how Shakespeare did not write Shakespeare's plays. Holger Syme, Shakespearean professor, did not like Anonymous.

The problem with Anonymous isn’t primarily that it gets so many things wrong. It’s that it’s a boring story, first and foremost; and it’s that its makers are posturing as “courageous,” iconoclastic heroes of intellectual honesty, holding the Shakespeare establishment to task for its persistent lies, or at least its devastating simple-mindedness. In the Deutsche Welle interview, we’re told that “no-one dared to make a movie about” the authorship “controversy” until now, and Emmerich has been retailing that same line in press conferences as well, claiming that “only somebody like me, who’s … a bit of an outsider in Hollywood, … but also a person who’s very courageous, could have done this. I could not see an English director doing it, because they would be afraid.” Elsewhere, Emmerich argued that his film is just another “invention,” since it’s impossible in any case to make a “historical movie” that’s not in some sense made up; and yet, he claims that Anonymous is a more authentic “celebration of the writer William Shakespeare” than anything academics have to offer.

[...] Now, Emmerich’s historiography — or really screenwriter John Orloff’s, since Emmerich’s “research” by his own admission seems to have been restricted to Google searches and a few DVDs — could be cast as radically skeptical: since Elizabethan England was a proto-Stalinist state (as Emmerich informed us during a debate at the English Speaking Union in June), no documents whatsoever, nothing in print or in manuscript, can be trusted; no-one, after all, could safely speak or write truthfully about anything in this environment, least of all about playwrights. Once you accept that premise, of course, absolutely any narrative can make sense, since all stories about early modern England then have equal validity (or lack all validity equally). Emmerich and Orloff certainly take the licence their philosophy of history gives them to impressive extremes, ignoring, basically, the entire archive of documented evidence for just about anything that happened in the sixteenth century.

Then Syme explains the plot of the film. I am really confused, because I think he's saying it claims that the Earl of Oxford is 1) the writer of Shakespeare's plays, 2) Elizabeth's illegitimate son AND 3) Elizabeth's secret lover? And she has ANOTHER illegitimate son with him? He can't possibly be saying this, right? He doesn't specify whether Elizabeth knows that Oxford is her son when she has another son with him. I don't think. I'm also not sure whether Essex, her other bastard son, is also portrayed as one of her (supposed) lovers, as he often is. Although wasn't Southhampton, her illegitimate son with her illegitimate son Oxford, also supposedly one of her lovers, if you believe she had lovers at all? My head hurts.

Also, one of the main themes seems to be that Not-Shakespeare was a genius because he wrote ENTIRE PLAYS IN IAMBIC PENTAMETER... like, uh, the other playwrights shown in the movie.

In conclusion: "It’s a pompous, ignorant, ill-informed, and clumsy film. Worst, it’s a film that thinks it has an important story to tell."

Remember how Syme particularly mentioned screenwriter John Orloff? Yeah. I quoted that part for a reason.

John Orloff says:
27/09/2011 at 4:44 pm

Sir–

I take it you didn’t like the film very much?

;)

Your prerogative of course.

Though the irony of a “review” taking myself to task for historical inaccuracies, but then makes many of your own about my film, is not lost on me.

Take your characterization of Romeo– you conveniently omit the very next lines in the film– the one where Dekker says it’s not all in iambic… and Nashe says “even easier”!

But such details don’t quite jive with your thesis that Roland and I are unaware of anything in Elizabethan England.

I look forward to your review of Shakespeare in Love– you remember, the film that shows the truth of Shakespeare being inspired by Gwenyth Paltrow to write Romeo, rather than Porto’s Romeus and Juliet….

Good luck! Respectfully…

jo



Holger Syme says:
27/09/2011 at 5:08 pm

Really? That’s your response: that I didn’t catch every word of your script on first viewing, while taking notes and being distracted by my shaking head?

Funnily enough, your point doesn’t really address my criticism either. What I objected to was the idea that anyone, especially Jonson, would have been astonished, surprised, or even mildly bemused by the notion of a verse play in 1598/9. That idea seems to be fundamental to what you were doing with those scenes, and it’s obvious nonsense. But if I misunderstood, I’d be delighted if you would correct my misperception.

Also note that I didn’t say you or Mr Emmerich were completely unaware of Elizabethan history. I said you were ignoring it. Rather a different thing.

Finally, yes, I (fondly) remember Shakespeare in Love. I wouldn’t have mentioned it in the review otherwise (though I remember Gwyneth Paltrow as an actress in it, not as a character…). It was a deliberately tongue-in-cheek work of fiction. If Anonymous presented itself the same way, I’d still have found it annoying, but I wouldn’t have gone on about it at such length. But it didn’t, which is why I did.

All that said, thank you for the comment. I’d actually be genuinely interested to hear more. I take it going this far into the realm of fiction was a deliberate choice, and I’d love to hear why you made it. It would have been a more obvious decision to simply tell the standard Oxford-wrote-Shakespeare tale — why not do that?



John orloff says:
03/10/2011 at 4:22 pm

no, actually I unfortunate haven’t the time to respond as needed. if I were to respond to every review to everything I write, I’d never have time to write. plus it would take actual effort to be as carry* as you, and I prefer my debates to be well mannered.

in any event, obviously I disagree with your basic thesis that we attempted a documentary and apparently blissfully ignorant– or apparently stupidly so– of facts.

we made a drama, much as Shakespeare did I’m his own time.

we even visually state it in the bookends– that the film is a “play”. apparently that was lost on you.

as was the fact that we make no claim that Oxford is elizabeths child. I’m rather shocked you understand dramaturgy so poorly, but consider yourself an expert of some sort?

I’m also fascinated by whir era comment about Richard iii not presented as fact, but our film is. again, I direct you to our bookends, and would enquire where Shakespeare’s disclaimer is found in Richard iii– PR any of the histories, save perhaps Harry V and chorus….


* He later says that this was autocorrectish for "catty."



Holger Syme says:
03/10/2011 at 6:23 pm

Dear John,

anyone who had the privilege of watching you “debate” Alan Nelson last week might question your commitment to a well-mannered debating style.

I know you won’t have time to respond, but I’d still like to hear where exactly I put forth the “thesis” that you wrote a documentary, or where exactly I call you ignorant — or where I say anything about the facticity of Richard III.

I realize Roland Emmerich and you both like to defend your fanciful historiography by likening your work to Shakespeare’s. I find that comparison a little preposterous, but you’re clearly not suffering from a lack of self-confidence. I’d also question whether Shakespeare knew what was fanciful and what was factual in his history plays: he wasn’t a modern historian, after all, and had to rely on a small number of not especially reliable sources. Richard III, as you doubtless know, is more than a little indebted to well-established Tudor propaganda. I have no idea, and neither do you, whether Shakespeare knew just how skewed his sources were. You, on the other hand, have access to a huge archive and libraries full of well-documented research on the era you’ve set out to portray. Rather a different scenario, no?

The “bookend” might have worked better if it weren’t presented by one of the most publicly visible Oxfordians around. Derek Jacobi, playing Derek Jacobi, talking like Derek Jacobi does not scream “myth” or “fiction” to my ears. “Film” or “play” does not equal “totally unreliable”: I would expect a play or a film on a historical subject to bear some resemblance to the history it seems to depict, and nothing in your bookends seems designed to let us know that we’re in for an entirely fanciful version of Elizabethan England. And in any case the aspersions you have cast on academic Shakespeareans in all your public appearances make it virtually impossible to read the film as anything other than an alternative to the “official” history. Your statements more than cancel out whatever fictionalizing effect the “bookends” might have had.

And lastly, a genuine question: how did I get your portrayal of Oxford as Elizabeth’s bastard son wrong? Do you mean that the film just has Robert Cecil retail that story, and for all we know he might be lying? That’s not what Oxford’s reaction suggested to me, but what do I know.

I do not see any answer from Orloff to that last question.

There's also an Oxfordian commenter, Jeff Rowe, who gets a side argument going, probably best summed up in his comment, "Just read up on the Earl of Oxford. Clearly, you have impressed a lot of people in the past with your knowledge of Shakespeare’s works. Obviously, you don’t know the man who wrote them. Who cares if the film supposes some things wrong. Stratfordians suppose the whole thing wrong," but that line of wank has been going on for three or four hundred years and is beyond my recap abilities.