I've seen about 15 mins of the Portman/Johannson one. Then my brain melted….

TOBG went from an okay book to a horrible film. My issue remains that Peter Morgan, who is has wrote amazing screenplays for films in the past, but seemed to be doing this film for the money. He wrote the tv mini-series Henry VIII starring Ray Winstone, which was an interesting take on Henry's more ruthless qualities. However, when a screen writer reuses his own material for two different productions, I get concerned.

Natalie Portman played the film's version of Anne. Yet, I found she had Anne's look down. While her characterization was a little too power hungry, nobody cries like Portman. She sucks you into Anne's psyochological decline, and by the end I was in tears.

Scarlett Johannsen was miscaste as Mary. While I usually love Scarlett, and own many of her films, I found her too flat in this film. It was unbelievable that Henry would chose Mary over Anne. Again, the characterization may have been the larger issue, not the actor.

I am not sure if I will ever see a film that totally persents the Anne I want.

wreckmasterjay said:

Maybe they should do a third film of “The other Boleyn Girl” but this time tell the true story of Mary and Anne from actual evidence and have no involvement with the book or Philippa Gregory. That way the film will be enjoyed by everyone and it will be totally factual and unbiased. 

 

Maybe a change in the title so as not to be confusing with the first two aswell. What does everyone think of that???

One can only dream…. !
 

Its a complete mystery how both versions were turned into utter tripe.

Meg:   The Other Boleyn Girl: Jersey Shore – frighteningly well put!  

Though now I'm having nightmares of that Snooki creature as Anne…. *shudders* 

MegC said:

I cracked up at the last!!  Can you imagine Snooki's hairdo on Anne????  And can you imagine the rumors that would float around the Court with the parties that the Jersey Shore crew gets involved in?  And they ARE all sleeping together!

I was also put-off by the fact that, while Philippa Gregory **hinted** at incest between George and Anne in an effort to save Anne's life, and the Hollywood version included it but stopped short of actually going through with it, the BBC version totally embraced that aspect of it which I thought was just disrespectful and gross!  How many people now honestly think that Anne and George truly were involved in incest?  After that, I wanted her arrested and executed just to put everyone else out of their misery.

I've always felt that the accusation of incest against Anne and George was the ultimate social taboo. It was not enough to get rid of Anne through charges of adultry, but to total desecrate her and George's legacy and memory. having said that, the use of incest in Gregory's novel and the subsequent films continue to purport rumors and innundo as 'facts.” There needs to be some responsibilty by writers, etc. to present the real facts, not use falsehoods to sell novels and films. 

Frankly, George was probably the one person who loved Anne for who she was, and had no interest making her into someone she wasn't. George and Anne, to me, were best friends, shared secrets, and had a close relationship. In the years preceeding their deaths, no one thought anything wrong with their behaviour toward one another. It is only under a microscope of fear and hysteria that their relationship became unnatural.

Since the charges against Anne have been dismissed as lies, why does popular culture continue to make Anne the Messalina of the Tudor era?

I only hope there is a time when a screenplay is written that takes into consideration the reality of Anne's life, and that person is intelligent enough to disseminate between Reality and Propaganda.

Hopefully those two are the only ones that will ever get made.  I can't remember where I read it but Philippa Gregory herself wasn't happy with either of them.  I'd like to think she learnt something about sacrificing facts for the sake of “drama” from those messes but apparently not….

Anyanka said:

I've seen about 15 mins of the Portman/Johannson one. Then my brain melted….

I'm re-watching it now…..

Dh keeps saying”that's wrong”….”That never happened”…”Venange demon why aren't you smiting people over this”..and his knowledge of history can be written of a stamp without covering the picture on it.

He's well trained.

I did that post completely wrong. I meant to quote Duchess's post and then comment. I don't really know how to do that so it all blurred into one. Sorry!.

So after finishing the book on Thursday, I thought it might be a good idea to sit down and watch the movie again. What a mistake this was. When I first watched it, I really really enjoyed the movie. I enjoyed learning about this other Boleyn girl that history forgot about. I got caught up in the drama. Now on my 2nd viewing, I sat there wondering what happenedto the movie I use to love. This movie is good if you have never read the source material it is supposedly based on.

One of the biggest problems with the movie is the massive shifts in time that help confuse what is happening on screen. Something as simple as a little subtitle telling us the month or year would have helped alleviate any confusions in my opinion. These shifts in time create a number of head scratching questions which include:

• Where is Mary's 1st husband? Why is this Stafford man chasing after her?
• How long did Anne and Henry Percy make googley eyes at one another before eloping?
• Is Elizabeth I the result of Henry's raping of Anne?
• Exactly how long was Mary, Henry's mistress?
• Exactly what is the time frame between Elizabeth's birth, the contemplation of incest and the execution of the Boleyns?

A good movie shouldn't have these types of questions, as the time fram would help establish them. Perhaps if this movie had another 30 minutes allocated to its time it would have made sense. Or perhaps if they ditched the new beginning and just started at Henry's court a lot of these time issues could have been addresssed.

The other big issue I had with the movie is the rather laxed approach to the whole separation from the church. It really is presented as Henry calls Katherine to court, she gives her powerful, emotive speech and then Henry says 'Excellent, that's that and now I can divorce you. Oh Anne where are you dear!' Cause the next minute poor little Henry is throwing a tanturm because Anne still won't marry him, even though he has done all this for her. Not sure what the this is in this movie, ordered her take away perhaps. And what better way to convince someone to marry you, then by raping them.

I also never got the sense that Henry was absolutely smitten with Anne and that Anne was working her 'magic' on him. I will admit that Anne had the slight spoilt brat persona that is present in the book, but not so much that as I was watching the movie I was thinking 'Man, you need beheading' Something I constantly thought when reading the book. The one thing the movie did do right (largely thanks to Portman's acting) is the exection of Anne. Just like I ended up feeling the same with the book, I really really wanted a different ending and thought Anne does not deserve this end.

I am grateful they didn't take the incest path completely. Cause even in the book, there is a possibility Gregory didn't want to say it was fact. But the way the movie handled it, helped demonstrate a possible reason George and Anne were charged with treason – through a total misunderstanding of what was seen.

Speaking of George, while it was never shown on screen. I do think the director took Gregory's approach to the character of George being gay. I felt Jim Sturgess was portraying George as a closeted gay man who possibly didn't even know he was gay. Just the way he initially has no interest in Jane Parker and is concerned about how to deal with the affection. But when he is told he is marrying her, his response really does seem to say 'No way Dad! I'm not interested in girls. You actually want me to have sex with a girl'

For a movie about titled after Mary Boleyn, she was the least developed of the 2 girls and while the book stuck to Mary's character, this movie used her as a secondary character to link events, which was a shame. And for such an influential man, Henry just came across as a pouty child.

The thing that I will give the director credit for, is the way he directed the movie so the audience could feel like they were spying on the events. I did really feel like a servant overhearing information and putting pieces together. Well that's how I felt when I watched it a 2nd time anyway. Either that or the director has no idea how to actually shoot a scene.

And while I dislike the new beginning, from a story teller's point of view I understand it. In a book, you can slowly flesh out a character, so eventually you can see that Anne's is purely driven my power and ambition. In this movie, there is no time for all that to be a cause of her initial action. So setting Anne up as the original potential mistress and then having Mary 'steal' Henry from her, helped get the character of Anne to that vindicitive little bitch that she was in the source novel.

As a soap opera and a diversion from real life it is a good movie, as an adaptation of a novel it is a bad movie and as a source of history is it is a shocking movie. BUT it did help me rediscover my interest in the Tudor Period, so it can't be all that bad

I watched the BBC version after reading the book and watching the movie with Natalie Portman, so i didn't have very high expectations when it came to historical accuracy, but I still ended up turning it off about three quarters of the way through as it wasn't even entertaining. What really annoyed me was the fact that Anne never seemed to have a change of dress-even when she was Queen! She seemed to wear the same plain gown throughout, whereas her ladies in waiting had much more courtly gowns adorned with pearls.

When Henry was sending her gifts and trying to please her, all I could think was- 'Henry, please buy her some material for a new gown!'

If they were going to make something which wasn't historically accurate, faithful to the book and had a poor storyline, the least they could have done was provide the lead actress with a decent costume.