Anonymous
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Was he or wasn’t he? That is the question.
Was Shakespeare really the man behind all your high school setworks? If your final English mark in matric was below 60 percent then don’t answer that.
This is a film about Shakespeare. Sort of. It’s a political thriller that conjures up fictitious accounts of history and blends them with facts. All this in order to ask the question: was Shakespeare a fraud?
Rhys Ifans stars as Edward de Vere, an Elizabethan courtier and patron of the arts who actually sees himself as the brains behind Shakespeare’s feather pen.
And so through well-known Shakespearean plays such as Richard III, De Vere watches his life play out in front of him. Everything including his scandal with the queen who may even be his mother. Ooh. And now he may never be known as the true author of the plays and poems all of England reveres.
Anonymous is an exquisitely shot film that merges the 1550s settings with beautiful, rich textures and colours. It looks beautiful, but the story itself isn’t a particularly thrilling one. – Helen Herimbi