Butler's Cinema Scene

Saoirse Ronan as Mary Stuart

“MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS” My rating: B-

124 minutes | MPAA rating:R

The story of Mary Stuart, the Scottish Queen, and her long-running rivalry with England’s Elizabeth I  is one of history’s great dramas. Heck, it even ends in a beheading.

So why do cinematic treatments of the yarn always feel so hidebound and emotionally remote?

In part it may be because the two women never laid eyes on one another. Their stories run on parallel tracks, but there is no intersection.

The new “Mary Queen of Scots,” with which storied stage director Josie Rourke makes her feature film debut, solves that problem (sort of) by inventing a meeting between the two monarchs. This allows two terrific actresses — Saoirse Ronan and Margo Robbie — an opportunity for a bit of hand-to-hand thespian combat.

But it’s not enough to make this big fat slice of history dramatically compelling.

Which is not to say there’s nothing to like here.  The film is filled with spectacular scenery and some of the dankest, dimmest castle interiors in movie history. The costuming is lavish.

And then of course you have these two actresses playing a long-distance game of diplomatic chess with the future of the English monarchy at stake.

The film begins with Mary (Ronan) returning to Scotland after a long sojourn in France, where she had married a prince who promptly died on her. She reclaims her throne from her brother James (Andrew Rothney), who will launch a civil war against her.

Mary poses a real threat to her cousin Elizabeth (Robbie), who is unmarried and indifferent about producing an heir.  Should Elizabeth die childless, the Roman Catholic Mary would inherit the throne of Protestant England.

Let the machinations begin!!!

Margot Robbie as Queen Elizabeth I

Elizabeth, who will live and die a virgin, sends her reluctant  beau Robert Dudley (Joe Alwyn) to Scotland to woo Mary.  Doesn’t happen.

Faring better is young Lord Darnley (Jack Lowden), who knows how to wheedle his way into a lady’s heart despite being a barely closeted homosexual. His marriage to Mary (it ends in assassination) at least produces a baby boy who will one day rule both Scotland and England.

Elizabeth’s ministers  also stir up rebellion among the Scottish nobles; they’re more than happy to have Protestant theologian John Knox (a nearly unrecognizable David Tennant) deliver  hell-and-brimstone sermons about the “harlot” on the throne in Aberdeen.

This “Mary…” takes a clearly feminist approach to the material. The two women, we are led to believe, might be able to come to an accommodation if not for the scheming of the men in their lives. These manipulative counselors (they are played by, among others, Guy Pearce and Ian Hart) are constantly nudging their queens toward dramatic conflict.

Moreover, for a Renaissance Catholic this Mary exhibits some highly modern ideas.  She’s quite alright with her favorite court musician (Ismael Cruz Cordova) being openly out; she  stops just short of singing a stanza of “Born This Way.”

Both Mary and Elizabeth appear to be at their least stressed when in the presence of their ladies in waiting. Strength in estrogen-packed numbers.

Of the two stars, Robbie’s Elizabeth is the more compelling. Initially a beauty who is scarred by smallpox (thus the thick white makeup of her latter years), she both loves and hates her regal power. She wages a continuous interior war between the ruthless needs of monarchy and her more humanitarian impulses, between the demands of state and her personal needs.

Ronan has a tougher go of it because, well, Mary is hard to get a handle on. She’s such a glob of contradictions — willful, malleable, gullible, witty —  that her core personality is almost impossible to pin down. Good thing Ronan is immensely watchable…with her red hair, blue eyes and pale complexion she’s like something out of a Botticelli painting.

But, as has so often been the case (the John Ford version with Katharine Hepburn in 1936, the Vanessa Redgrave/Glenda Jackson rendition in ’71), it’s a story that never quite jells cinematically.

| Robert W. Butler