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Married at 15, widowed at 18, Catholic queen Mary Stuart (Saoirse Ronan) returns to her birthplace of Scotland to claim her throne. To the south, her Protestant cousin Elizabeth I (Margot Robbie), who will ultimately put her to death, rules England. The film tells the tale of 25 years in the parallel lives of the two queens. While visually stunning, Mary Queen of Scots plays fast and loose with historical accuracy.
Long-time theatre director Josie Rourke makes her feature film directorial debut, bringing theatrical sensibilities to this tale of two queens, based on John Guy’s controversially partisan biography My Heart Is My Own: The Life of Mary Queen of Scots. This book famously re-envisioned the Scottish queen as terribly unlucky rather than a woman ruled by her passions, which most biographers contrast with Elizabeth, who is typically regarded as a rational sort. This interpretation, along with Rourke’s London theatre sensibility — privileging evocative aesthetic over historical accuracy — colors everything in Rourke’s movie, from Saoirse Ronan’s punky jewelry to her casting choices. Similar to recent adaptations of Shakespeare, this Tudor tale has color-blind casting, featuring Adrian Derrick-Palmer as the English ambassador to Scotland, and Crazy Rich Asians’ Gemma Chan as Elizabeth’s lady-in-waiting, Bess Hardwick. Where The Hollow Crown’s succeeds in this regard, Mary Queen of Scots fails; by limiting the actors of color to only minor roles, leaving the principles pale and frequently ginger. It gives the impression of tokenism, rather than something well thought out.
Positive impulses undermined by a careless hand are the key problems with this movie. Mary Queen of Scots tells us outright, repeatedly, how dreadful it is to pit women against each other in manufactured rivalries that only benefit the churlish men around them… and then proceeds to do exactly that, in a series of ham-fisted parallel shots and awkward, sexist binaries used to compare the two queens. Throughout, I was struck with the sense that there was something new and interesting and entirely feminist trying to emerge, despite the overriding narratives around the cousin-queens. Even the historically-important differences of religion are downplayed in an effort to say, ‘Look, they might’ve been friends, if it weren’t for the meddling of the men around them!’ But again, it undermines that message with the layers of embedded misogyny that the plot gives lipservice to condemning.
Saoirse Ronan’s Mary is a woman ahead of her time, given combined Cool Girl and Strong Female Character coding by the clumsy script. She, too, is progressive (‘Let Catholics and Protestants live in peace! I have no issue with homosexuality! Let me speak frankly about sex!’), bold/gutsy, and betrayed at every turn by the lesser men around her, from her half-brother and her husband to an unrecognisable David Tennant as the fire-and-brimstone Protestant preacher who leads the rebellions against her. Robbie’s Elizabeth appears mostly to offer contrast: where Mary is headstrong and reckless, Elizabeth is hesitant and paranoid; where Mary is young, beautiful and fertile, Elizabeth becomes ugly from a battle with smallpox, actually ages over the 25-year timeline, and is apparently not only childless, but barren too. Mary is all woman; Elizabeth describes herself many times as having become a man. It’s clumsy, historically inaccurate and does neither woman any kindness.
Though historically and thematically awkward, aesthetically the film succeeds. Scotland is lovingly shot; the costumes are beautiful, if clearly adapted for a modern eye, and never obscuring the slender elegance of the two leads; and certain highlighted details are terribly cinematic — from the brief shot of menstrual blood in a basin, to the layers of veiling sheets in the laundry house that brings Elizabeth and Mary together for a final fictional encounter. This scene has Ronan and Robbie at their best, and brings the movie to its close with yet another tantalising glimpse of the better film at its centre, trying to come out.
Mary Queen of Scots opened Friday 18 January, and is now on wide-release across Ireland.
