Anonymous Released 28 September 2011 Director Roland Emmerich Starring Rhys Ifans, Vanessa Redgrave, Joely Richardson, David Thewlis, Xavier Samuel, Sebastian Armesto, Rafe Spall, Edward Hogg, Jamie Campbell Bower, Derek Jacobi Writer(s) John Orloff Producer(s) Roland Emmerich, Larry Franco, Robert Leger Origin United Kingdom, Germany Running Time 130 minutes Genre Drama Rating 12A

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A splendid load of old nonsense!

German director Roland Emmerich is famed for his on-screen acts of destruction. In Independence Day, he famously demolished the White House. In Godzilla he let a giant lizard lay waste to New York. This only whetted his appetite for carnage though and he has wrecked the earth not once, but twice in eco-disaster movies The Day After Tomorrow and 2012.

Now Emmerich seems to have set his sights on ‘The Bard’ himself, William Shakespeare. The idea that Shakespeare never wrote the many plays and poems that bear his name is, of course, nothing new. The conspiracy theories have been doing the rounds since the mid nineteenth century, when his plays attained the worldwide popularity that holds to this day. Some academics couldn’t accept that a man from such humble means as Shakespeare could have written plays that showed such knowledge of royal affairs and history.

They have insisted that another author wrote the works and merely attached Shakespeare’s name to them out for reasons of maintaining propriety. Over the decades various figures have been identified as the “real” author including Christopher Marlowe, Sir Francis Bacon, the Earl of Derby and the Earl of Oxford. Emmerich and writer Joe Orloff have plumped for the last option - Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford.

Starting off, rather grandly, with Derek Jacobi on stage introducing the action, it tells the story of de Vere (Rhys Ifans) and his relationship with Queen Elizabeth I (Vanessa Redgrave). The young de Vere is a talented playwright who performs his works at court, but as the Queen comes increasingly under the influence of her puritanical chief advisor William Cecil (David Thewlis), plays are essentially banned.

De Vere continues to write though and after seeing the power of one play by Ben Jonson (Sebastian Armesto) he decides to get his own work onto the stage. De Vere initially asks Jonson to publish the works under his name, but Jonson is reluctant. William Shakespeare (Rafe Spall), an illiterate, opportunist actor, learns of Jonson’s predicament and when the first play is performed to rapturous acclaim, he declares himself the writer. At first this arrangement suits everyone but soon Shakespeare starts to get greedy. The staging of the plays is also played to a backdrop of the succession to the elderly Queen and de Vere gets involved in the political infighting that could lead to civil war.

Right, first off this is a load of old tosh that even Dan Brown would be ashamed to put his name to. Questioning the authenticity of Shakespeare is one thing but then trying to link it to a conspiracy that seems to take in every bit of gossip about the Elizabethan court takes it to absurd levels. In short, don’t believe a word of it.

Having said that, once you know not to trust the material, there is a lot to enjoy in Emmerich’s ‘factional’ film. It’s quite a lot of fun even if it is overlong. There’s a finely judged performance from Vanessa Redgrave that shows there’s life in the old girl yet. And in a nice touch, her daughter Joely Richardson plays her as a younger woman in flashbacks. David Thewlis makes a decent baddie and the increasingly good Rafe Spall has good fun making Shakespeare a drunken chancer.

The film is anchored though by an excellent lead performance from Rhys Ifans. Ifans’s output has been fairly mixed in the past but here he gives a surprisingly dignified and moving turn, which suggests bigger and better things to come from him.

Overall this is a fun historical romp; perfectly enjoyable and visually spectacular, just don’t take it too seriously!

- Jim O’Connor