Movies: Anonymous

The 16th century had at least 2 persons, who shaped history: William Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth I.  Since then they are the objects of countless speculations. The director Roland Emmerich and his script writer John Orloff presented in the movie "Anonymous" a very special perception about the playwright and his relationship to the majesty (imdb).

I don`t believe that the plot has much to do with the historic reality, but I could accept the story as a kind of Science Fiction. I consider "Anonymous" as an alternative history, describing the past of a parallel world. Maybe there are alternative universes where such ridiculous things could have happened like Emmerich & Orloff were telling us.

But anyway, the flick was somewhat entertaining. At least the director and his cinematographer (Anne Foerster) opened a peep hole into an alleged London in the time of the Renaissance, kind of. It seemed to be a very bright and clean 16th century. Maybe in this part of the universes they had washing machines, a public garbage collection and synthetic fibers. I regard the contributions of all the people in production design, art direction, set decoration and the costume design as more important than the performance of the actors. They delivered an amusing museum show.