PAIN OF THRONES
Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Margot Robbie, Jack Lowden, David Tennant, Guy Pearce. A pair of queens not always a winning hand
THE next all-stops-out costume drama to come along after the mighty majesty of The Favourite was always going to be up against it.
So it proves to be for Mary Queen of Scots, a visually dazzling but thematically drab take on the fateful rivalry between two major monarchs in the late 16th century.
It is of no small importance that these feisty frenemies are played by two of the most prominent actresses of their generation.
If the pairing of the great Irish star Saoirse Ronan and our own Margot Robbie was not the key part of the creative equation here, then the end result would have been much, much worse.
While the movie has impeccable creative credentials — John Guy’s acclaimed biography Queen of Scots has been adapted by Beau Willimon, creator of the series House of Cards — it struggles to find anything illuminating in its tale.
A delicate air of dullness sets in from the opening scene.
It is 1587, and the young Scottish queen Mary Stuart (Ronan) is about to put her head on the chopping block on the day of her execution.
Weirdly, the care factor provoked from this worrying sight is decidedly low.
Things don’t improve when the clock is wound back to work out how the idealistic and upbeat Mary and her pragmatic and downbeat cousin, Queen Elizabeth I (Robbie), fell out so tragically.
To cut a long story short — and it is long — all you need to know is that the pair’s all-male coteries of advisers considered each ruler a subversive threat to the other.
Ronan and Robbie do their darnedest to turn things around, even though Mary and Elizabeth spend most of the movie well and truly apart.
The monarchs never actually met in real life, which makes their admittedly gripping confrontation in the final act come off as a desperate move in hindsight.
Production values are impressive, striking just the right balance between the glam and the grot that embodied the period.