3 Reasons Why "Anonymous" was not "Amadeus"

With the release of the movie Anonymous today, directed by Roland Emmerich and based on the fringe theory that William Shakespeare did not, in fact, pen any of his many great pieces of English literature, I decided to fork over my matinee showing fee, hoping for a great conspiracy. This model of piquing movie goers' interests with tabloid-esque story lines of classic art celebrities has worked before, certainly, on me. For instance, even though I came late to the viewership, I fell in love with Mozart all over again last month when I saw the 1987 Oscar winning movie, Amadeus. Like Anonymous, Amadeus followed a historically dubious story line -- that one based on a heated jealousy between Mozart and his musical peer, Salieri. A complete plot synopsis can be found here, but, suffice it to say, the movie did wonders not only for Mozart but for Salieri as well, boosting both composers' operatic works up the chains of the popular opera performance repertoire. Disappointingly, I don't foresee any similar spike coming to Shakespeare after this film. (Thankfully, I also don't think Shakespeare has anything to worry about regarding popularity.) Here are three reasons why I don't think Anonymous lived up to its potential.

1. Poor Storytelling
At first, the framed narrative of Anonymous resembles Amadeus with a modern day actor reading off the tragedy's prelude. We learn that Shakespeare's life is not as it has been taught to us, but rather, political undercurrents from centuries ago have kept the truth of Shakespeare's identity concealed. The movie flashes back to Elizabethan England where, immediately, the film's potential begins to unravel. Storytelling is performed like hopscotch, transitioning among at least three distinct periods of Queen Elizabeth's life over a dozen times throughout the movie. Subplots supporting the legitimacy of the fringe theory are glossed over in rushed vignettes. We learn that Queen Elizabeth's court may have had great importance in concealing Shakespeare's identity, but we never truly feel it. That was the magic in Amadeus: not only did we believe Salieri's sinister intentions happened, we wanted to, we wanted to repaint history with our own modern brush. When we moved back and forth in Amadeus, it was only back to the narrator, keeping the series of events easily organized. At times in Anonymous, it felt the cumbersome storytelling actually attempted to hide the failings of the plot itself, keeping the viewer second guessing what was happening just to keep them intrigued. Whatever the case, the story could have benefited from a simpler chronological approach.

2. Poor Dialogue
Secondly, aside from the performance of Rhys Ifans as the Earl of Oxford and Vanessa Redgrave as Queen Elizabeth, the acting and dialogue in the movie simply did not carry the grandeur of their subject. Multiple times throughout the showing, my theater's audience openly laughed at intense scenes simply because it was not clear whether the actors and screenwriters were attempting drama... or melodrama. The portrayal of the British poor verged on parody, with every pub scene about to erupt in "99 Beers on the wall" while the royalty's two dimensional puritanism got boring far too quickly. To put it differently, I was looking for more of this and less of this. Ok, so that may be a little too exaggerated, but essentially, I was not drawn in to the Elizabethan world that the movie could have taken me to. Instead, the film came off as a feeble attempt to depict dreary England through worn out cliches. In Amadeus, even despite the fact that Mozart and many others had no accent of any kind, speaking in full American argot, the Viennese culture seeped out of each scene. I felt the struggle among the King's royal composers, Leopold's desire to see his son return home, and the pain in Mozart's wife Constanze as he slips into insanity. The movie was about the character development more than plot, and the actors delivered. Again, in Anonymous, that seemed lacking.

3. Poor Interweaving of Original Works into the Film
Lastly, and most importantly, Anonymous failed to effectively intertwine the works of the subject, i.e. Shakespeare's plays, into the storyline. Now, for those of you who rush out to the theater to prove me wrong, I will admit that there were two distinct times where the plot relied heavily on the plays, and those two times were possibly the peaks of the film. In fact, if the screenwriters had chosen to end their interweaving there, I may have been more pleased. Instead, however, the audience is bombarded with references to plays that have no bearing on the film, at one point seeing a series of five or so plays listed off within a minute. I could just hear the screenwriters (and, again, the audience members) saying to themselves, "I know that play! I know that one! This is believable now because he mentioned Romeo and Juliet!" In Amadeus, the inclusion of "The Marriage of Figaro," "The Magic Flute," "Don Giovanni," and of course, "Requiem" were integral in telling the story. We felt the composer's inner turmoil as he struggles to produce them for his both the ghost of his father and his benefactor. Here, in Anonymous, however, the works feel like mandatory accessories that need to find their way onto the screen. What little we do see into the author's writing process is nice, but not enough. How this blunder could have happened, when the material to work with is a collection of the best English plays ever written, is incomprehensible. In the end, this slip up became the overriding factor in my disappointment as I never felt I was watching a Shakespearean play, just a movie about Shakespeare.

Ok, because you got through that with me, I'll briefly state some things that I did happen to enjoy. First, the costumes, particularly those of Queen Elizabeth, were dazzling. She was a delight every time she appeared on the screen. Second, the movie ends well. I am even more demanding on movie endings than other parts because a movie's ending provides the sentiment with which it ushers you out the door. I felt they did a good job wrapping up the storyline, even throwing in some unexpected twists. Lastly, the performances of both Rhys Ifans and Vanessa Redgrave, as alluded before, were enjoyable and certainly kept the film from fully sinking. In the end, however, these tidbits were unable to make up for the general underwhelming production. I'd give it a C+ or B-.