Mary Queen of Scots and why we need a national film industry

Mary, Queen of Scots is a film about, arguably, the most famous Scotswoman in history and her relationship with Queen Elizabeth I of England, arguably, the most famous Englishwoman in history. Mary is played by an Irish woman, Elizabeth by an Australian, the film is written by an American, directed by an English woman, and financed by a London-based company.

Let’s be clear; this is not some nationalist rant about only Scots being allowed to tell Scottish stories – that would be ludicrous. But this is a foundation story in Scottish history, yet its motives are pulled this way and that to fulfil the separate ideologies and agendas of those who are involved. The result is a film that speaks with so many voices it has no voice of its own.

There is no Scottish agency in this portrayal of one of the key figures in our history and that, alone, is surely a reason for having our own film industry. If all we want is to be content to act as a backdrop for other people’s action films, and lure tourists here because we look like a cartoon, as they did for Brave (2012), then fair enough. But what is a national film industry for if not to tell us and the world stories about who we are, how we got here, and where we go next? The story of Mary Stuart plays an important part in our concepts of our nationhood and our relationships with our neighbours, domestically and internationally. There is a fundamental lack of that sort of understanding in this film.

I get that this film provided a lot of employment for a lot of people – there are cast, crew, drivers, prop buyers, caterers and all sorts of vital trades who earned a much-needed wage from this. But it is transitory; the dogs bark and the caravan moves on as an old Arab proverb, recently quoted in Govan, would have it. The profits from the film – and there should be some given the relatively modest cost – will be repatriated to places other than here. It’s impact on the local industry is a passing fancy. It is impermanent.

Like so many other historical films these days Mary, Queen of Scots concentrates on the costumes and hairstyles at the expense of the story. There is no getting away from the fact that this is a triumph of production design but although it looks good there is not a lot to it.

The film begins with Mary (Saoirse Ronan, above far right), widowed Queen of France, returning to Scotland at the age of 19. Rather than stay in France and remarry she has come to Scotland – a country where she has spent very little time at all – to press her claim to the throne of England and Scotland, currently held by Elizabeth I (Margot Robbie, above right).

The notion of these two incredibly powerful women trying to chart their own path while respective courts of men try to manipulate them should be compelling. That it isn’t, I think, is down to the script’s failure to characterise their relationship in any depth. Screenwriter Beau Willimon (House of Cards) is happy to have Mary portrayed as a Joan of Arc type liberator with a diverse and empowered retinue, while Elizabeth is portrayed as a white-faced pantomime grotesque at odds with everyone. This does both women a disservice; their relationship was much more complex and given the volumes of correspondence between them it should not have been difficult to come up with a more nuanced view.

But this is a film of broad strokes. Almost all the men are plotting to their own ends, only her protector Bothwell (Martin Compston) appears to be on Mary’s side, initially at least. Even her husband, Darnley (Jack Lowden), is ultimately not to be trusted. And stirring the pot against her most of all is John Knox (David Tennant). Incidentally, I’m not that well up on Knox, but the ranting roaring Rasputin we have here seems a bit wide of the mark.

In the end what there is to enjoy from this film comes from the performances of the two principals. Ronan and Robbie find enough here to bring some life to their characters, even if Robbie is more plot device than credible character at times.

The key scene is the meeting between the two. It never happened but most films about Mary and Elizabeth manufacture a meeting, so it has become a Tudor trope. One of the weaknesses of Josie Rourke’s direction is her theatrical background; much of the film seems stagey but the theatricality of the meeting provides both actors with the intimacy to give us some sense of who they might have been.

In the end, as the children’s rhyme and Liz Lochhead tell us, Mary Queen of Scots got her head chopped off. The execution bookends the film and gives Ronan a striking entrance and a poignant exit; what more can an actor want.

The tragedy is that the last half of Mary’s life was much more interesting than this soap opera treatment of ‘the life and loves of Mary Stuart’. Telling that story however would require a level of understanding that seems to be beyond this film leaving us to settle for cultural appropriation on a grand and generic scale

Stan & Ollie - Laurel and Hardy deserve better than this

When I was young there were two things that were staples on the TV landscape; Laurel and Hardy comedy shorts and impressionists, usually doing impressions of Laurel or Hardy and sometimes both. Little and Large – ask your parents – pretty much made a career out of taking off Stan and Ollie.

Which brings me neatly to the crux of my antipathy towards this film; it offers no more of an insight into these two great comedians than any of those impressions. It’s two hours of Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly doing Stan and Ollie schtick, but as a film it’s puddle-deep.

If you know Laurel and Hardy, it will only make you long for their unique brand of genius; if you don’t know them – and that would be the bulk of the key movie-going demographic – you won’t be any wiser by the end.

Stan & Ollie is presented almost entirely without context. The opening preamble is a recreation of their famous dance from Way Out West (1937); it is note and step perfect but if you don’t know the film and you don’t know them then it seems a little odd. Likewise, Stan’s hospital visit to a bedridden Ollie in County Hospital (1925), recreated here as part of their stage show, is so much funnier if you understand the screen relationship between these two rather than their off-screen relationship of which we, quite rightly, knew nothing watching their films.

Their sublime moment of genius in The Music Box (1925), a film involving Stan, Ollie, a piano, and a massive flight of steps is only mentioned in passing, presumably because it would be too difficult to recreate here.

After that initial preamble and a contract row with their boss, Hal Roach (Danny Huston) though you wouldn’t know who he is from the film, we pick up our heroes in 1953 on a tour of the UK. They have been booked into second string venues by their oily promoter and are making the best of it. Stan is pinning their hopes on a version of Robin Hood which he has been writing and is keen for a British producer to finance.

As they are frustrated at every turn, they continue their death march round the country’s variety venues and the tensions in their relationship become apparent. You know however that all will be reconciled in the final reel which it duly is.

The film takes liberties with chronology. The Robin Hood film was abandoned in 1947, six years before their final tour. It also takes some cruel liberties with location – the Glasgow Empire never looked much like this.

Stan & Ollie’s saving graces come in the performances. Coogan is good as Stan with Reilly equally good as Ollie but the script only rarely allows them to be anything more than impressions. One scene in which Stan endures public humiliation in a producer’s office and another in which the boys share a bed – forerunners of those famous Morecambe and Wise skits – are frustrating glimpses of what might have been.  Likewise, Shirley Henderson and Nina Arianda, who play their wives, are the funniest things in the film following their belated arrival.

Stan & Ollie isn’t a bad film, it’s just not terribly good. It’s thin, and by the numbers, and uncinematic – it feels like those ITV biopics of Cilla Black or Bobby Moore – and Laurel and Hardy deserve better than this.

It might be a good idea to give the film a miss and spend an hour on YouTube with the real thing.

The Favourite makes Olivia Colman an awards front runner

Queen Anne was the last of the Stuart monarchs and, history tells us, an unremarkable ruler. Not much happened during the reign of Anne and her consort Prince George of Denmark. There was apparently an incident in January 1711 when, evidently out of the blue, she appointed Abigail Hill, a former chambermaid, to be the Keeper of the Privy Purse. This was a very public snub to her previous confidante Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough.

If you think, ho hum, you’d be wrong. It may all have been a bit tedious in real life but in fiction this is the jumping off point for The Favourite, the latest film from Yorgos Lanthimos, in which this palace spat is the foundation for a bawdy romp which at times crackles with invention and mischief.

In doing so it features three staggeringly good performances from Olivia Colman as Anne and Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz as the rivals for her affection, both literal and political. Much of the attention rightly goes to Colman for a career best performance which is bringing her long overdue international attention, but we should not overlook Weisz as Sarah Churchill. Her performance is heart breaking and, even allowing for Lanthimos’s usual difficulties with ending a story, I came away feeling perhaps sorrier for her than anyone else in the film.

The Favourite wears its cinematic antecedents lightly. There are obvious visual references to Barry Lyndon (1975) and Marie Antoinette (2006) but perhaps it owes most to All About Eve. This behind the scenes palace soap owes a lot to the 1950 movie with Emma Stone as Eve to Rachel Weisz’s Margo Channing.

The scheming and duplicity are rife as the rivals jockey for influence and manipulate the leading politicians of the day. In that sense The Favourite is a welcome female turnabout on what was very definitely a male society. Women are so insulated here that Colman’s monarch knows next to nothing about the war being fought in her name.

At the heart of it all is The Queen, played here as a woman with some challenging mental health issues. The implication is that the failure of seventeen pregnancies has taken its toll both physically and emotionally, which is hardly surprising. But Anne is no soft touch. She is aware of the competition for her favour and she is not above playing one against the other, if for no reason than to brighten up a dull life.

In some ways this film is about the emptiness of power. She is the most powerful woman in the realm, but her power is circumscribed; in real life Anne was diligent about her Parliamentary responsibilities apparently. What she wants is a friend and, possibly, a lover and to be treated as a person not a head of state.

All of this is addressed in a terrific screenplay by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara. Unusually for a Lanthimos film, characters are given great dialogue and make the most of it.  Looking at Lanthimos’s previous English language films, The Lobster (2015) and The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017), you could be forgiven for thinking that the characters had only learned to speak English on the day of filming. Here the lines are whip-smart, the one-liners sting, and there is real point and purpose to most of the dialogue. Not surprisingly the cast fill their collective boots.

Visually, The Favourite is stunning. Having watched Mary, Queen of Scots (2018) and All is True (2018) at about the same time as this one it seems that filming by candlelight is this year’s thing for cinematographers. Robbie Ryan’s fluid camerawork here keeps the film moving as quickly as the dialogue and it provides a unique look for a period piece. The only thing that irritated me is his use of ultra-wide fisheye shots for his masters; I understand why he did it I just found it irritating. It took me out of the picture too often.

For me The Favourite is a little over-praised. It is less than the sum of its parts but some of those parts – not least the performances and the script – are spectacular and well worth the price of a ticket.