Last night Heather and I went and saw Elizabeth the Golden Age and I must say from a historical standpoint it is a standard Hollywood disaster. The movie covers a turbulent time in England history in 1588 when Protestant England was threatened by Catholic Spain. The move focuses on Sir Walter Raleigh and his role in the battle and interaction with Elizabeth the first of England.
Well the movie portrays the rough historical events but there is no context really given to many of the events. I had to explain many of the events to Heather after the movie simply because she did not know the historical context of the movie. Raleigh’s interactions with Queen are very unbelievable and there really is not historical that she was in love with him and him with her, standard Hollywood exaggeration at a minimal.
The movies portrayal of the battle of Gravelines is perhaps most shocking and further shows why going to see movie to learn history is a precarious idea at best. The movie portrays Raleigh sailing one of the famous fire ships that broke up the Spanish Armada when if act fact he was on shore at the time of this famous incident. The movie also depicts the armada breaking up right after the fire ship account. When in actuality it was broke up on coast of Scotland and Ireland when the armada attempted to take the long route back France. Furthermore during the movie it states the English lost about ten ships in total when they actually lost none, with the exception of the fire ships.
All in all it Elizabeth the Golden Age is a horrible historical movie and not all the great of movie in general. In dragged at times and characters where introduced without any real introduction to who they are. To really enjoy the movie and understand it you need to know the historical context in which it takes place, but if you know the context the divergence from fact will just annoy you. They could have done a lot more with this film; the best thing about this film is the costumes.
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