The Other Boleyn Girl

[cleolinda]

Oh my God, that was horrible. You know what? It doesn't even bother me that the movie wasn't like history, because movies so rarely are, and the book wasn't either. And it doesn't bother me that the movie wasn't like the book, because--well, movies so rarely are, and the book wasn't like history anyway, and also, I'm usually the first one up at bat to defend movie adaptations, particularly the Harry Potter movies. You know why it was horrible? Because it didn't make any damn sense. We're never even told that Mary's husband died, so when William Stafford is all like, "Come live with me, and be my love!," everyone in the audience was like, "Wait, where's her husband?" And worse yet? Mary's like, "Wait, who the hell are you?" Because we saw Stafford ("Oh, hello, Stafford") all of once or twice previous to that. Let me recount the entirety of his dialogue before he proposes to her (paraphrased):

"I've heard that court... changes people."

"I'm leaving--court is... different now."

And you know, there were changes that made sense that didn't even bother me. It didn't even bother me, for example, that Lady Boleyn is now a sympathetic proto-feminist, because I understand that they wanted someone to voice modern concerns like, "How can we sell our daughters off like cattle?" We're not privy to Mary's internal dialogue anymore, so I understand that we need someone to voice that, as disappointed as I was that we weren't going to see Kristin Scott Thomas play a fantastic ice bitch; she plays the hell out of Maternal Indignation!Lady Boleyn anyway. I don't really see the point in rearranging the story so that Anne goes after Henry first and then he falls for Mary and blah blah blah, but I don't think the idea was bad per se. I think it was executed badly, but it could have worked. And I knew things were going to get cut--the movie's not even a full two hours, for God's sake. However, here's the kind of entire subplots the movie doesn't have:

>> Mary being Katherine's favorite lady-in-waiting
>> Mary learning to love farming at Hever
>> George being gay
>> George being really inappropriately affectionate with his sisters
>> George actually sleeping with Anne (which, frankly, I was glad of), although he nearly does
>> Jane Parker being a bitchy, hot-blooded sneak (as it is, she's just kind of emo in all of two minutes of screentime that George won't sleep with her)
>> Mary and her husband reconciling
>> Mary's husband dying, or there being any plague at all
>> Mary's daughter Catherine, who now doesn't even exist
>> Mary and William's courtship
>> The court going to Calais
>> Mary escaping court but having to go back because Anne takes Catherine (who doesn't exist now) to the Tower with her
>> Henry and Anne having a hot, volatile, fight-and-make-up relationship

And you know what? That last part bothered me the worst, because you know how Henry and Anne actually end up sleeping together in the movie? I'm going to make you swipe to see this part, because I don't want to upset people who get triggered by things, but: >>HE RAPES HER? WHAT? WHAT? RAPE? WHAT? ELIZABETH IS THE PRODUCT OF A RAPE? HE RAPES HER? ARE YOU SHITTING ME? SERIOUSLY?<< It wasn't necessary, it wasn't historical, it wasn't even in the book, which has a lot of fictionalized unpleasantness unto itself, it's a PG-13 movie, the scene itself is double-plus unpleasant and actually WAY less discreet than the soft-focus sex scenes, and--SERIOUSLY? I cannot get over this. SERIOUSLY. Even Alison Weir wrote in one of her books, and I am quoting this verbatim from memory, I recall it so vividly, >>"Henry was too much of a gentleman to resort to rape," which was precisely how Anne kept him dancing on a string for six years.<< GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Here's why I'm pissed off, really: there is absolutely no reason this movie had to be associated with the book at all. None of the melodramatic goodness of the book is in it--half the drama of the book is that Mary's loyalties are pulled between (among?) Anne, Henry and Katherine, as well as her family and her two husbands. Movie!Mary doesn't have any growth or awesomeness at all, because she never does anything but come and go when she's told. The only reason she even flees court during Anne's downfall is because Anne tries to convince George to sleep with her (Anne) in front of her (Mary), and Mary is either so disgusted or so (correctly) terrified that shit is about to go down that she rides away in the middle of the night. (And then George and Anne can't go through with it--which, again: thank God. Lesson learned for future movies: Showing consensual incest: baaaaad. >>Rape: A-OK!<<) She spends all of three seconds at Hever Rochford, and then comes back because she wants to beg Henry to spare Anne's life. Well, okay, since she doesn't have Catherine's welfare as a driving motive anymore; fine. And the bit at the end with Anne's execution and Henry's letter to Mary (I'm being vague on purpose here), okay, that was actually pretty well-played. But pretty much everything awesome about the book, every reason anyone loves that silly, historically inaccurate melodrama in the first place, is gone. And they don't even do a very good job of pacing what's left--it always feels like we're hearing about things that happened offscreen. Like, we didn't have enough time to show the interesting parts in the Great Divorce storyline, so we'll just spend an hour cutting back and forth between Henry screaming at people and bitching at Anne. It was two hours of skipping the good parts, and you can quote me on that.

Note: My mother knows nothing about Tudor history except what I've told her. She liked the movie and was surprised that I didn't. "Okay, except for a couple of gaps," she said, when I pointed out that Mary suddenly may or may not have a husband and That Stafford Guy (who isn't even cute) comes out of nowhere. "WHAT ABOUT THE--" "Oh. Yeah. Also that part. That part was... not so good."

That said: Natalie Portman was pretty good. My mother apparently didn't even know who was in the movie, because she totally squee'd when Portman's name showed up onscreen. "I've loved her ever since Closer !" And Eric Bana is better than you'd expect. Scarlett Johansson isn't good, per se, but she's perfectly cast in terms of looks, so I give her a pass. The costumes were awesome, obviously, but I don't think the movie's good enough to push them to Best Costume 2008, although we'll have to wait and see--I think The Duchess will put up a fight, if nothing else does.

Okay. Whew. Now that I've got that out of my system, there's pretty much only one way to recoup two hours watching that clusterfuck. I don't know how long it'll take me, but you'll be the first to know when I'm done.

Comments

[crickwooder.livejournal.com]

DUDE. I just posted abut this very thing. I am Not Happy.

[cpl593h.livejournal.com]

To be quite honest, I think all historical inaccuracies aside, Philippa Gregory writes some of the most sexist tripe I've ever read.

[spectralbovine.livejournal.com]

Wow! A friend of mine recently posted about how bad this movie was too (and he doesn't post that often, so he went out of his way to warn us away). I was surprised.

[rufinia.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes, OMG yes.

[last-archangel.livejournal.com]

Oh, it was just awful. I thought even the costumes were poorly-done; did you see all the copies and clones everywhere, like Katherine's ladies-in-waiting, all wearing the Exact Same Dress except for accent colors? Also, absolutely no effort was put into making it a good film. It was poor enough as an adaptation, but it also was the laziest piece of movie-making I've seen in a while. If possible, it was worse than the ridiculous reality-show like version that the BBC spent £30 on a few years back. Possibly the worst screenplay I've seen in recent years. The editing was poor, the acting (even on the part of actors we know are good) was abysmal. It was just messy and substandard all around.

[msilverstar]

It's like the worst of all possibilities, huh? Not history, not the book, not even a good movie, just a muddled mess? Thanks for the warning, not that I'm going out for a while anyway, but definitely not to see this one!

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Didn't Peter Morgan write The Queen? What the shit happened?

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Exactly. I can deal with it not being like history, or not being like the book, or even not being like EITHER, but I can't deal with it being bad on top of that, and The Bad Scene is like an extra, spiteful cherry on top of the sundae of suck. I seriously cannot get over them just making up something that unpleasant when it wasn't even necessary to the story in any way at all. I mean, there's a similar scene in Rob Roy, for example, but it has its place, you know? It serves SOME damn purpose.

[last-archangel.livejournal.com]

Honestly, my vote is laziness. Or perhaps this was his way of joining the strike.

Oh, I forgot: Since WHEN was Elizabeth, a PRINCESS OF THE BLOOD, raised in Rochford with her bastard half-sibling?! Somehow all of my history books got that one wrong!

[lilgoala.livejournal.com]

I hadn't planned on watching it in theaters, but I thought I might catch it on DVD, so thanks for saving me from renting it. Can't wait for the m15m treatment. :)

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know that was ridiculous, but it's the kind of thing I understand them putting in--it's shorthand for, "And Elizabeth was safe kind of, for a while and here's a chance to echo the opening scene, aren't we clever." It's inaccurate, but I see why they did it.

[crickwooder.livejournal.com]

It was like movie shorthand for "Henry became a real jerk, did we happen to mention?" Horrific.

[angevin2.livejournal.com]

Oh man, I hated this movie too. Except for Mark Rylance, since I always love Mark Rylance when he isn't talking about Shakespearean authorship. But how on earth did they manage to make Tudor history so BORING?

Also:

Movie!Mary doesn't have any growth or awesomeness at all

...or more than one facial expression. (Unless you count "screaming during childbirth," which brings her up to two.)

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Seriously, I would have said, "Eh, Netflix it" until That Scene came along. Now I'm just angry. And the rest of it isn't even lazy screenwriting, because you have to WORK to change that much of the story. It makes me wonder why they even bothered adapting it--it seems like open disdain for the book to just not even use it, except for the line "My golden sister, my milk and honey sister," which may be the ONLY ACTUAL LINE that made it into the movie.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Well, it's weird--she's really sympathetic to Katherine and writes her as a really interesting character (okay, The Constant Princess is kind of atrocious, but aside from that), and I like Hannah Green in The Queen's Fool, but her Elizabeth is just pure character assassination. I seriously cannot understand why she has such a hate on for Elizabeth.

[spectralbovine.livejournal.com]

I think you will appreciate my review of Jumper (http://spectralbovine.livejournal.com/117803.html).

[claidissa.livejournal.com]

Wow, thank you for posting this. I didn't really know anything about the book, but it looked interesting, and was looking to see if it was any good. Now I'm definitely not going to see it.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

I keep thinking I'm going to stop being angry any moment now, and it keeps not happening.

[tifaria.livejournal.com]

Heh. I don't think I've read a positive review of this yet. I was really eager to see if your opinion would differ or not. I guess I'll be waiting for a rental on this one.. or maybe I'll check out the book in the meantime.

[last-archangel.livejournal.com]

Oh my GOD, yes. Cleolinda, please tell me you'll do this.

[elisa0984.livejournal.com]

did you see all the copies and clones everywhere, like Katherine's ladies-in-waiting, all wearing the Exact Same Dress except for accent colors?

I can see that working for the ladies in waiting. When I studied Elizabeth's court last term there was a lot of emphasis on how this was a coveted position and the Queen would have to spend her own money attiring her ladies, so similar dresses would have cut down on costs.

But I'm with you on the entire cast matching. That's just sloppy.

[cleolinda.livejournal.com]

Reread the last line of the entry. ; )

[cpl593h.livejournal.com]

I think that she has a hate on any kind of outwardly strong female figure. She champions the historical underdog, which in itself is actually really interesting because often those are the people that I would like to know more about, but she does it by contorting their better-known counterparts into sexually deviant, manipulative, out-of-character messes. Elizabeth and Anne could have been all of those things irl, who knows, but I think she does it purposely and it just always leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I can't help but get the feeling that she is made uncomfortable by strong women, or is at least conflicted about writing them.

I always want to really like her books but in the end I'm just disgusted.

[last-archangel.livejournal.com]

Wanting an overall similar feel is one thing, but this is supposed to be the 16th century - they didn't have sewing machines! No matter what, the court gowns would never be perfect. Plus, when clothing her ladies, a queen would more likely hand out her old cast-offs for refurbishing rather than create a "uniform".

[last-archangel.livejournal.com]

Awesome. Fabulous. Amazing. It won't be the first time a m15m is better than the actual product upon which it is based.