By Harry Haun
Emmerich couldn't conceal his surprise when Rhys Ifans, without a second of hesitation, said "Oxford." The correct answer for him was Shakespeare, says Emmerich, "because Rhys is famous for his comedic talent." (Shakespeare, here, is depicted by Rafe Spall as a boozy, opportunistic, illiterate buffoon and bit player.) "Then, the casting director immediately jumped in and said, 'Oh, Rhys can be quite posh. He's very good at playing posh.' That led to my thinking, 'Well, Rhys is eccentric. Oxford is eccentric. He is probably super-enthusiastic about playing this part because, all of a sudden, he doesn't have to be funny. He can be a different character.' I think it shows. I think he gave a performance of a lifetime in this movie."
Ifans, who resembles a slightly older Ryan Gosling when brooding darkly, doesn't have the role all to himself. The film flashes back and forth over two different time zones in Elizabethan history some four decades apart. The young Earl of Oxford is played by Jamie Campbell Bower — a good physical facsimile.
"I guess that was Roland's astute eye," reckons Ifans. "I was just over the moon to have someone as good-looking as Jamie [represent me] because I never looked that good when I was his age. All I said to him was 'Make me look good in the sack.'"
26 Oct 2011
Rhys Ifans in "Anonymous."
Columbia Pictures
Vanessa Redgrave plays the elderly Elizabeth, reeling through a court thick with intrigues whirling around the pressing question of her successor. De Vere enters the fray with Henry V, which favored the Essex line over the Cecil line, but, just to be on the safe side, he asks playwright Ben Jonson to take the credit. When Jonson declines, up pops Shakespeare, ready to be Front Man of the Ages.
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| Joely Richardson and Jamie Campbell Bower in "Anonymous." | ||
| Columbia Pictures |
The young Elizabeth is played with considerable conviction and plausibility by Redgrave's daughter, Joely Richardson. "Casting directors, so clever," she quips lightly. "Mom and I being related made [the match-up] a little bit easier."
And, no, unlike Ifans, Redgrave had no advice for her younger self. "I know what my mother's image is — I know how she's perceived," Richardson allows, "but, as a mother, she is like Miss Sweetheart. She would never say anything [negative]. She's totally supportive and kind and not bossy at all. I'm the bossy one."
This mother-daughter act is not unprecedented. It jump-started Richardson's career. "I was still at drama school, and my mother was doing a film by David Hare, 'Wetherby.' I did the flashbacks of her as a teenager because I was a teenager then."
The authorship issue motivating this movie was not news to Ifans. "There is no absolute answer about who the author of these works is," he stresses. "I was kind of aware of the Bacon theory and the Marlowe theory and blah blah blah, but, having been offered this part, I obviously had to research Oxford a great deal. Oxford's life is very, very well-documented — much more so than William of Stratford, certainly.
"In reading Shakespeare's work," he continues, "you have to accept that whoever penned these plays would have had to have been well-traveled, would have most certainly been a multi-linguist and would, without a shadow of a doubt, have had to have a unique insight and knowledge into the workings and political dynamics of a very secretive, paranoid Elizabethan court. Edward de Vere ticks all those boxes. William of Stratford, on the other hand, doesn't. Do I believe it was Edward de Vere? I'm not 100 percent convinced. All that I am convinced of is that whoever wrote these works was a genius, and I think it is our duty as actors, directors and spectators to question or offer possibilities as to who wrote these plays because that can only illuminate the plays in a different way. And I also think whoever wrote these plays — we owe it to him or her or them to ask this question. It would be a crime not to."
Unlike Ifans, Richardson pleads oblivious to the issue. "I was completely unaware of the authorship question, and I say that with no pride whatsoever. Now, I feel like a total ignoramus. How could I have possibly not known about it? When Roland approached me and my mom about this, I still thought, 'Interesting, but I doubt it.' Then I started to read up on it, and then I got really, really interested. It becomes fascinating, and then suddenly I realize that it's a hundred-year old debate.
"There are so many interesting facts, but what I think really is interesting is the whole story: that it makes it a mystery, that the plays themselves are so incredible in that they literally encompass every human story — y'know, from tragedy to romance to a historical place. The more you research it, the more interesting it gets.
"I see this as an absolute celebration of the work. Roland has a story about a particular theory, which at times is a romantic one. I love the idea about how discombobulated love is. I love that he and John Orloff have opened up the debate. It's not a controversy. It's not a bashing of Shakespeare. It's an exploration of it."
Continued...
