I wasn’t sure what to expect going to The Other Boleyn Girl the other night, but my partner assured me that it would be a fine film. Now, my history is a little faded when it comes to these matters, so I wasn’t sitting there counting inaccuracies or not as some purists might be driven mad by, and in the end remembering next to nothing of this time period made the film quite an enjoyable experience. Well, enjoyable may not be the word, for the film made me feel pretty sick overall, which was the point…so, job well done. Going in with the assumption that I was going to see some period piece chick-flick, I have to say that I was quickly engrossed in the story. It’s basically a story about ambition, as the sickly passive Boleyn patriarch (Mark Rylance) is pressed by his domineering brother-in-law the Duke of Norfolk (David Morrissey) into whoring off one of his daughters (Portman and Johansson) to the King of England (Henry Tudor) in hopes that she will bear him a son, which, in so doing, the Boleyn family would gain standing and wealth.
That’s the ball that gets things rolling at any rate, but the story gets thicker and thicker until everyone is caught in the sludge of their desires. Each person is faced with some form of humiliation or other as they attempt to hold onto the thread of power they imagine they have. I found Portman especially good as the conniving, in over-her-head, and brash seductress Anne Boleyn. Although Mary Boleyn (Johansson) is not immune to her own humiliations, she acts as the pure hearted foil to all the decrepitude within the king’s court.
It’s a well made film overall. I don’t have many complaints about it at all. It was all done with all the details you’d come to expect from such a film. As I said, I found it to be quite an engrossing experience. It was in many ways like watching Shakespeare or a Greek tragedy – a well constructed piece where everyone is tied and twisted together in god-awful ways to which they feel they will get ahead…until one part of the equation goes down, slowly pulling everyone else. It makes for a great experience, though not a pleasant one by any means. The purists bitch about its inaccuracies and blah blah…but that’s why it’s called historical fiction and not fact. So get over it. It’s a story that could be about any kingdom in any time period.
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