2008 Woodie Awards
Film Review: Other Boleyn Girl
Kelly McGee
Issue date: 3/14/08 Section: A & E
Based on the novel by Philippa Gregory, "The Other Boleyn Girl" plays like a historical soap opera complete with scandal, betrayal, and a scheming family hoping to increase their class standing by whoring their daughters to the King of England. In the story Mary Boleyn (played by Scarlett Johansson) and her sister, Anne (Natalie Portman), compete for the affections of Henry VIII (Eric Bana), whose desperation for a male heir tears apart England in history, and women's bodices on screen.
While the movie changes and even ignores some of the occurrences in the book, screenwriter Peter Morgan successfully maintains a similar stream of events. With the king's current wife, Katherine of Aragon, failing numerous times at providing a male heir to the throne, Anne and Mary's father and uncle provide a plan to seduce the king into choosing Anne as his mistress. Instead, he is attracted to the already married younger sister, Mary. She is successfully persuaded to sleep with the king in order to improve her family's status, and in the process falls in love with him.
After providing the king an illegitimate son, Mary is placed in the background as Anne returns from a period of exile in France with an agenda of seducing the king.
Other than a few slow scenes, the movie was well paced until the very end which, to begin almost suddenly and move quite quickly. Johansson portrayed the maternal and kind-natured Mary with near perfection, while Portman mastered the deceptive, determined, and ambitious character of Anne down to her captivating dark eyes that her character was famous for.
Henry VIII was handsomely portrayed by Eric Bana in the way that he was most known for in his time, rather than the excessively published portrait of his overweight self in his older age. While he was an unfaithful husband who was as much a pig with women as he was with food near the end of his rule, Bana brilliantly convinces the audience to feel some sympathy for the king in his desperation for a son.
While it has received mixed reviews, I found the movie to be both captivating and entertaining, and was driven by the characters more than the story-line. If you enjoy soap opera drama with elaborate sixteenth century costumes, set in large English castles, then this movie is a must-see.
While the movie changes and even ignores some of the occurrences in the book, screenwriter Peter Morgan successfully maintains a similar stream of events. With the king's current wife, Katherine of Aragon, failing numerous times at providing a male heir to the throne, Anne and Mary's father and uncle provide a plan to seduce the king into choosing Anne as his mistress. Instead, he is attracted to the already married younger sister, Mary. She is successfully persuaded to sleep with the king in order to improve her family's status, and in the process falls in love with him.
After providing the king an illegitimate son, Mary is placed in the background as Anne returns from a period of exile in France with an agenda of seducing the king.
Other than a few slow scenes, the movie was well paced until the very end which, to begin almost suddenly and move quite quickly. Johansson portrayed the maternal and kind-natured Mary with near perfection, while Portman mastered the deceptive, determined, and ambitious character of Anne down to her captivating dark eyes that her character was famous for.
Henry VIII was handsomely portrayed by Eric Bana in the way that he was most known for in his time, rather than the excessively published portrait of his overweight self in his older age. While he was an unfaithful husband who was as much a pig with women as he was with food near the end of his rule, Bana brilliantly convinces the audience to feel some sympathy for the king in his desperation for a son.
While it has received mixed reviews, I found the movie to be both captivating and entertaining, and was driven by the characters more than the story-line. If you enjoy soap opera drama with elaborate sixteenth century costumes, set in large English castles, then this movie is a must-see.
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