Written by William Nicholson and Michael Hirst, The Golden Age has sweep and momentum and almost as many mood shifts and genre notes as the queen has dresses. It's intentionally playful and an inadvertent giggle, an overripe melodrama that's by turns a bodice-ripper, a cloak-and-dagger thriller and a serious-minded historical drama with contemporary overtones.
The first film opened with persecuted Protestants roasting over an open fire courtesy of Elizabeth's predecessor; this film leads off with a scheming King Philip II of Spain, her former brother-in-law (Jordi Molla), who wants to dethrone the Protestant queen by igniting a Catholic-led holy war. The resulting conspiracy, with its ominous monks and Latin chants, reeks of The Da Vinci Code, as well as a more urgently modern struggle.
For much of The Golden Age, the filmmakers flirt suggestively with the idea that the English or perhaps the English-speaking world is engaged in another holy war against another set of radical fundamentalists. By the time the Spanish Armada has set sail for England, and Elizabeth has donned armor and a flowing red wig to rouse her waiting troops to victory, the suggestive has become explicit. Declaiming from atop her white horse, her legs now conspicuously parted as she straddles the jittery, stamping animal, she invokes God and country, blood and honor, life and death, bringing to mind at once Joan of Arc, Henry V, Winston Churchill and Tony Blair in one gaspingly unbelievable, cinematically climactic moment. The queenly body quakes as history and fantasy explode.
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