Mary Queen of Scots (2018, R)

Before I begin, I’ll admit to knowing pretty little about Mary Queen of Scots.  Beyond the barest details, I don’t know what in this story is true and what’s made up, though I’ve heard it takes quite a few liberties.  Even without having a good feel for the historical inaccuracies, I recognize problems the film has, and yet I also admit that I enjoyed it a lot.

When the Catholic Mary returns to her native Scotland to rule there, Queen Elizabeth’s Protestant court starts to get edgy.  Even as Mary writes to her cousin Elizabeth, urging to be named the successor to Elizabeth’s throne, Elizabeth’s advisors are adamant that a “papist” will never rule England.  The two queens conduct a long-distance battle of wills through ambassadors and other go-betweens, and all the while, they separately wrestle with the question of how to rule men when their societies deem them lesser for their sex.

This is an interesting story to me (again, with the disclaimer that I don’t have a good grip on just how fast and loose it plays with history.)  I really like the tug and pull between Mary and Eizabeth, two powerful, intelligent women who both believe they rule by divine right.  It’s neat to see how they respectively respond to the idea of whether or not they’ll marry, how they deal with the courtiers who frequently attempt to talk over them, and how they react to the incredibly-gendered pushback they get from men who would have them under their control (a big theme of this movie is the fact that even queens are forced to deal with slut-shaminng and toxic masculinity up to their eyeballs.)  I also admit to liking stories of court intrigue and secret plots (I don’t watch Game of Thrones for nothing!), and this film has quite a bit of that.

But still, it’s a pretty flawed movie, much more so than its fine cast deserves.  Mary herself seems to get lost in the shuffle sometimes – she’s always at the heart of the action but not necessarily the viewpoint character we find within it.  This can make the film feel lacking in direction, as we see what Mary’s doing without always having a clear reason for why she’s doing it.

Watching the film, I definitely wish it were stronger, but I was still drawn in by it.  The performances are well anchored by Saoirse Ronan as Mary and Margot Robbie as Elizabeth, two formidable actresses playing two women in extraordinary positions, inexorably linked across distance.  Other familiar faces include Brendan Coyle (Mr. Bates from Downton Abbey,) Guy Pearce, and Tenth Doctor David Tennant.  The film also features a bit of race-bent casing, which I find refreshing.  Gemma Chan (lately Astrid Leong in Crazy Rich Asians) plays one of Elizabeth’s ladies-in-waiting, and Adrian Lester, who played an excellent Oliver a handful of years ago in an adaptaion of As You Like It, has a larger role as an English ambassador to Scotland.

Warnings

Strong violence (including rape,) sexual content, language, drinking, and thematic elements.