Anonymous

Much has already been made about the factual and historical underpinnings of Roland Emmerich’s new film Anonymous, based on the theory that Edward de Vere, a 16th century English nobleman, was the true author of Shakespeare’s plays. There is a multitude of inaccuracies at the foundation of the theory, as Shakespeareans both at Duke and elsewhere have been quick to point out, and, if anything, Anonymous does little to cover them up.

But one need not grapple with inaccuracies of fact in order to indict Anonymous as a poorly rendered piece of cinematic garbage. The film opens in the present day, with established Shakespearean actor Derek Jacobi starting a speech on the question of authorship in a crowded theater, before dissolving back to the 16th century, in which we see poet Ben Jonson pursued and then questioned by a group of royal guards. We are then taken back to the same setting five years earlier, and later make it back to a full 40 years before that. From there, Anonymous continues to spasm unpredictably (and unnecessarily) through time and space, while at the same time depicting plays within plays about plays, ad nauseum.

This, however, is not to be mistaken as “playing with” narrative, nor “blowing it up” nor “destructing it,” as all of those things could be misinterpreted as having positive connotations here. Anonymous only mishandles its narrative, trying to pull off the same tricks seen in better films, without any reason at all for doing so. The fickle temporal structure of the film adds nothing at all to it, either in terms narrative or stylistic. Instead, it arrives as a total non sequitur, and comes off as severely and aggressively out of place—perhaps Emmerich saw it employed to greater effect somewhere else, and decided to hawk it for his own?

This, however, is more or less consistent with the approach taken toward the rest of Anonymous. Any moment which calls for emotional or dramatic depth is occasion for a thorough pillaging of Shakespeare’s plays themselves: the film’s utterly contrived romantic couple pull, for instance, from A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo & Juliet for their pillow talk. And, in what amounts to a truly shameful plagiaristic thrust, the film’s central dramatic montage simply compiles the most climactic moments of Julius Caesar, Hamlet and Macbeth, among others, in an attempt to evoke and convey emotion beyond Emmerich’s own ability.

In the end, the greatest testimony of all to the absolute failure of Anonymous as a cinematic endeavor is that its woeful execution and sterile organic creations overshadow its offensive and ridiculous premise. In the face of an utterly abortive attempt at cinema on a magnitude such as this, it almost ceases to matter who wrote Shakespeare’s plays. Emmerich proves himself content to pick their pockets regardless.