Anonymous

Showtimes

For decades, scholars and intellectuals have debated a question that haunts the history of English literature: were the works of William Shakespeare written by Shakespeare himself? Theories abound � some credit Shakespeare’s plays to famed contemporaries Francis Bacon and Christopher Marlowe � but the reigning true author among Shakespeare revisionists remains Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. De Vere’s reputation as a highly skilled poet and playwright, and his close ties to Queen Elizabeth I, place him at the centre of a controversy that has altered the way many view both a literary legacy and the history of the English royal court. Premiering at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival®, Roland Emmerich’s historical thriller Anonymous takes the question of Shakespearean authorship and weaves it into the story of the Essex Rebellion in the court of Elizabeth I. Emmerich � best known for blockbusters such as The Patriot and Independence Day � sees the story of de Vere as part of the larger scheme of political intrigue, romantic scandal and betrayal that threatened Elizabeth’s reign even in its final years. Recreating seventeenth-century London with the full arsenal of cinematic magic at his disposal, Emmerich crafts a complex historical world against which the most salacious drama of the period plays out. Emmerich and screenwriter John Orloff take the mysterious circumstances of de Vere’s birth, as well as the rumours surrounding his possible affair with Queen Elizabeth, as the motivation behind the playwright’s place as a political tool in the Essex plot to claim the throne. Rhys Ifans (Greenberg, Enduring Love) � an indispensible supporting player in so many films � makes a star turn as de Vere, matched by a cast of renowned English actors that includes both Vanessa Redgrave (Coriolanus, The Whistleblower) and her daughter Joely Richardson (The Affair of the Necklace), as Queen Elizabeth, David Thewlis (War Horse, The Lady) as the scheming William Cecil, Rafe Spall (One Day, Hot Fuzz) as a brash young Shakespeare and Derek Jacobi (The King’s Speech, Gosford Park), who delivers the film’s prologue from a contemporary London theatre. An ambitious period film from a highly-skilled director, Anonymous takes audiences back to a time when the London stage was a political battlefield on which dramas greater than the plays themselves were acted out by some of the most powerful figures in English history.

All Movies