千千晚星

又是HBO一部精品剧。在土豆上在线看的 ElizabethI，效果不太好得正合适，活人开膛，板斧断头的镜头也就还可以忍受。Elizabeth女王和伯爵的亲密镜头也可以忍受，反正他们亲密行为到相拥舌吻也就涨停了。



看了豆瓣上的评论，果然大多数都是在讨论“童贞女王”; 的爱情生活：谁是她的最爱，她在爱情和权利中的抉择之类。不过有一篇很有意思，兴高采烈地提到6万英镑和砍死玛丽的两板斧--那个镜头真是让人印象深刻。

又有多少人真的想通过看这个来了解历史的？这又不是纪录片，娱娱乐乐才是真。不过我看时还是很用心，以便看完后到官网去产生“恍然大悟”的快感。

看主演的Interviews就很有快感。说的很明白，女王和伯爵都完全忠实于自己，不曾有什么摇摆，更不需要伪装成殉难者。爱情如同香料，可以让人愉悦，也可以让人流泪，但却不是他们生活的中心。

 

HBO: It seems like there's three sides to Elizabeth: the private moments with Lester and Essex, the semi-public where she's meeting with her privy council and the icon Elizabeth, where she's almost a symbol of England.
     
Helen Mirren: Well, that's an incredibly accurate description. You know the set was extraordinary, and it was built almost exactly on the pattern of Whitehall Palace. And actually when you go to any of those palaces that are still existent, you see this strange configuration of rooms, and you go, How on earth did people live like this? This is very weird. You have a whole series of rooms off a corridor, one after another after another, going further and further into the inner sanctum. And usually the last room along there is the bedroom. And you see that in Russian, you see it in Italy, you see it in all these sort of medieval palaces. And so there was that sense of the inner, inner sanctum, and as you go further and further and further away from the bedroom, the rooms become more and more public.

The other thing to understand is that they were constantly surrounded by people. They were never, ever, ever alone. Ever. Night time, day time, there was always someone around them. Privacy was sort of unheard of. So their emotional lives were played out against a sense of constant attendants.

  

HBO: What are your thoughts about her sex life? The big question.

Helen Mirren: The big question. Did she or didn't she?

HBO: Did she or didn't she.


     
Helen Mirren: Well, no one will ever know. Logically, it seems to me highly unlikely that she would ever have jeopardized her body or her political position. It was very dangerous physically for women to get pregnant. She loved her position as a monarch more than she loved anything, and she loved a lot of things. She loved riding, she loved men, she loved dancing, she loved blood sports. She loved reading, she loved music. She was a great lover, but she loved power more than anything. More than all of those things put together.

And her position on the throne was very tenuous. She came to the throne a bastard. There were constant attacks on her from within England and from without England, on her claim to the throne. So I think if she'd found herself pregnant with an illegitimate child, it would've been an absolute disaster. She could've easily been deposed. And so I don't think she would've ever jeopardized her position like that.

She knew that her body as a woman was also a political body. It was something to be bought and sold politically. That's why she was always flirting with foreign princes. She was supposed to be a virgin, and she used it as a political pawn to keep her enemies at bay. So the practical side of my brain doesn't think that she would ever have jeopardized that. But having said that, I suspect she did everything else. She probably had sex in the Clintonian sense. I did not have sex with that woman. You know? I wouldn't be surprised if she got up to a lot of those kinds of sexual games.






HBO: Tell us about your character, Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester.

Jeremy Irons: Well, he was a lifelong friend to Elizabeth. Historians say he was her favorite. She had many favorites, but because we only have four hours to tell this story, one has to simplify. And so Leicester represents all the favorites, really, apart from Essex, who in the second part becomes her favorite.

And it's interesting to play, because she was a virgin, and yet they had a pretty close, physical relationship. And that's very interesting within this structured court where everybody has their position and is very polite to her, to play the guy who she values for the fact that he speaks the truth to her, he just talks to her like a friend.

And that's doesn't mean that sometimes she doesn't take offense against him. At one point she bars him from court for about seven years because she discovers that he's married. And has a child. That upsets her, and so she kicks him out. But eventually she wants him back because she wants somebody who will speak to her without any bullshit.

   
   

HBO: And how do you think he feels about her?

Jeremy Irons: He adores her. He knows that she is changeable, moody, but that at base she is incredibly strong and incredibly clever politically. He adores her. Unabashedly. But he knows he can't marry her because she uses the fact that she is unmarried for political ends, for keeping friends with the French, because there's a French prince who maybe will marry her, or there is a Spanish king who maybe will marry her.

And so she uses her unmarried state to keep the peace in England. And although I think she probably would quite like to marry Leicester, she feels that she needs to marry a prince. And Leicester may be an earl, but he's not a prince.

   

HBO: Does that make it difficult for you as an actor having to weave the two together?

Jeremy Irons: No. No, because what you do as an actor is actually very easy. You just learn about the period, so you create for yourself a life in the period. You have the dialogue, which hopefully you lay on top of that, and then you have your own emotional thoughts which you put through all that to give it life.  

And I don't believe that even though they may have spoken differently and lived in different ways that they were any different than us. Their hearts and their minds and their instincts and their brains and their souls were exactly the same as ours. I don't think that changes with people. You only have to look at period writing-fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth century- to realize that human emotions haven't changed, we have not evolved in that way. I think inventions allow us to do different things, and live in different ways. Tastes change, architecture changes. But I don't believe the way people feel has changed.