Anonymous (film)

Anonymous
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Roland Emmerich
Written by	John Orloff
Produced by	Roland Emmerich Larry J. Franco Robert Leger Christoph Fisser Marc Weigert John Orloff Kirstin Winkler Volker Engel
Starring	Rhys Ifans Vanessa Redgrave Joely Richardson David Thewlis Xavier Samuel Sebastian Armesto Rafe Spall Edward Hogg Jamie Campbell Bower
Narrated by	Sir Derek Jacobi
Cinematography	Anna Foerster
Edited by	Peter R. Adam
Music by	Harald Kloser Thomas Wanker
Production companies	Centropolis Entertainment Relativity Media Studio Babelsberg Motion Pictures
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release date	28 October 2011
Running time	130 minutes
Country	Template:Film UK
Language	English
Budget	$35 million

Anonymous is an upcoming drama film directed by Roland Emmerich. It stars Rhys Ifans and Vanessa Redgrave. It will be released theatrically in the United States on 28 October 2011. It is produced by Centropolis Entertainment and Studio Babelsberg, and distributed by Columbia Pictures.

Plot

In Elizabethan England, political intrigue abounds between the Tudors and the Cecils for the succession of Queen Elizabeth I (Vanessa Redgrave), as the Essex Rebellion moves against her. The film follows the involvement of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (Rhys Ifans), as not only the incestuous lover of Queen Elizabeth, but also the true author of the works of William Shakespeare (Rafe Spall).

Cast

• Vanessa Redgrave as Elizabeth I of England. Redgrave commented that "It’s very interesting, the fractures, in this extraordinary creature.... I only hope that I've been able to respond to Roland in this script sufficiently to be able to just give a little glimpse of this fracturing, this black hole, with shafts of brief sunlight."
• Rhys Ifans as Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford / "William Shake-speare"
• Joely Richardson as young Princess Elizabeth
• David Thewlis as William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, longtime adviser to Queen Elizabeth. De Vere came to live in his household as a ward of the Queen at age 12 and became Burghley's son-in-law at age 21. Burghley is thought to have inspired the character Polonius.
• Xavier Samuel as Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton, Shake-speare dedicatee and the focus of his sonnets; prospective suitor to Cecil's granddaughter Elizabeth de Vere
• Sebastian Armesto as Ben Jonson, poet, First Folio editor, and friend of Susan de Vere
• Rafe Spall as William Shakespeare
• Edward Hogg as Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, William Cecil's son and successor
• Jamie Campbell Bower as young Oxford
• Antje Thiele as Lady de Vere
• Robert Emms as Thomas Dekker, dramatist
• Tony Way as Thomas Nashe, poet and satirist
• Trystan Gravelle as Christopher Marlowe, poet and dramatist
• Sebastian Reid as Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, executed for treason
• John Keogh as Philip Henslowe
• Sir Derek Jacobi as Narrator (Prologue)

Production

Development

Screenwriter John Orloff had penned the script back in the late 1990s, but it was shelved after Shakespeare in Love came out in 1998. It was almost greenlit as "The Soul of the Age" for a 2005 release, with a budget of $30 to $35 million. However, the financing proved to be "a risky undertaking," director Roland Emmerich told Screen Daily at the time. In October 2009, Emmerich stated, "It's very hard to get a movie like this made, and I want to make it in a certain way. I've actually had this project for 8 years. It's always supposed to be my next movie, but this time I'm really going to do it because I'm already set to shoot on March 22 [2010]."

In a November 2009 interview, Emmerich said of the film:

[F]or me there was an incredible script that I bought eight years ago. It was [initially] called Soul of the Age which pretty much is the heart of the movie still. It's three characters. It's like Ben Jonson, who was a playwright then. William Shakespeare who was an actor. It's like the 17th Earl of Oxford who is the true author of all these plays. We see how, through these three people, it happens that all of these plays get credited to Shakespeare. I kind of found it as too much like Amadeus to me. It was about jealousy, about genius against end, so I proposed to make this a movie about political things, which is about succession. Succession, the monarchy, was absolute monarchy, and the most important political thing was who would be the next King. Then we incorporated that idea into that story line. It has all the elements of a Shakespeare play. It's about Kings, Queens, and Princes. It's about illegitimate children, it's about incest, it's about all of these elements which Shakespeare plays have. And it's overall a tragedy. That was the way and I'm really excited to make this movie.

At a press conference at Studio Babelsberg on April 29, 2010, Emmerich noted that the success of his more commercial films made this one possible and that he got the cast he wanted without the pressure to come up with at least two A-list American actors.

Filming

Elizabethan London was recreated for the film with more than 70 painstakingly hand-built sets at Studio Babelsberg. These include a full-scale replica of London’s imposing The Rose theatre. The remainder of the Elizabethan setting was created and enhanced via CGI.

The film was to be the first major motion picture to be shot with Arriflex's new Alexa camera, a competitor to the RED One.. However, Disney's 2011 film Prom made it to theaters first.

Controversy

In response to news that the film was in production, James Shapiro, Columbia University English professor and author of Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?, wrote an April 11, 2010 op-ed article in the Los Angeles Times titled "Alas, Poor Shakespeare." He acknowledged recent popular support for Oxfordian theory, including three Supreme Court Justices quoted in a 2009 Wall Street Journal article. Shapiro said that 25 years ago, support for Oxfordian theory was not strong, and that in a celebrated moot court in 1987, Supreme Court Justices John Paul Stevens, Harry Blackmun and William Brennan had "ruled unanimously in favor of Shakespeare and against the Earl of Oxford." Shapiro asserted that "Emmerich's film is one more sign that conspiracy theories about the authorship of Shakespeare's plays have gone mainstream," and also against Anonymous in an April 2010 Wall Street Journal interview.

Screenwriter John Orloff's published response in the same newspaper noted that "Shapiro has, at best, oversimplified the facts," and quoted U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens as saying in 1987: "'I have lingering concerns.... You can’t help but have these gnawing doubts that this great author may perhaps have been someone else.... I would tend to draw the inference that the author of these plays was a nobleman. Stevens was conditional in his view of the matter, saying, "And I would say, also – perhaps departing from my colleagues –that I am persuaded that, if the author was not the man from Stratford, then there is a high probability that it was Edward de Vere."

In a June 2010 post-filming interview with the Washington Post, Derek Jacobi, who plays the Narrator of Anonymous, noted that he is not neutral in the Shakespeare authorship debate. "I'm on the side of those who do not believe that the man from Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the plays. I think the name was a pseudonym, certainly. [Anonymous] puts the authorship question firmly and squarely on the big screen. It's a very risky thing to do, and obviously the orthodox Stratfordians are going to be apoplectic with rage."

Zweigenbaum (talk) 01:53, 4 October 2011 (UTC)It is relevant, given the reference here to the Shakespeare Authorship Question Wikipedia site, that concurrent with the impending release of 'Contested Will' and notice of the in-production 'Anonymous' film, that several Stratfordian editors occupied and heavily revised the Authorship site, accompanied by much adjudication, banning, and bitter exchange. The upshot was that the Oxfordian contingent of editors, both long and short duration, were driven from the site. It is almost entirely representative of the Stratfordian interpretation of the controversial issue, and has been termed propaganda by censured and expelled participants. Readers should be apprised that neutrality issues were rampant throughout this conflict and the present form, made permanent this summer 2011, does not represent the spectrum of literature in the field of study. Zweigenbaum (talk) 01:53, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

See also

• Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship
• Shakespeare authorship question
• Prince Tudor theory

External links

• Official website
• Anonymous at IMDb
• Anonymous at AllMovie
• Anonymous at Box Office Mojo
• Anonymous at Rotten Tomatoes
• Anonymous at Metacritic
• Anonymous trailer
• April 29, 2010 Press Conference at YouTube (partial; see other linked clips)
• Shakespeare's Lost Kingdom: The True History of Shakespeare and Elizabeth (book supported by the filmmakers)