Mary Queen of Scots

EXPOSITION, EXPOSITION, EXPOSITION!

Is the name of the game in this flaccid history piece where pox blisters do more acting than the actors and the nuance of political and personal allegiances are handled with the delicacy of a feather gripped in a boxing glove. Mary Queen of Scots chronicles the power struggle between the eponymous sovereign and Queen Elizabeth in this picture-book period piece where nothing is left to the imagination and every shred of mystery is squeezed out of the narrative like the last blob of toothpaste left in the tube. Whilst it’s interesting to learn about the Protestant/Catholic divisions in Scotland and the feats these formidable women achieved in the face of diversity, it’s decisively less interesting to have every character ham-fistedly explain their motives to you as if they were being read from a speech bubble in a GCSE Bitesize textbook.

One third through, any hopes that the mundanity of the film was just a story ramping up to something better, if only you gave it a chance, are squarely crushed. Two thirds through, you realise that you’re now only in it for the lush cinematography, sweeping Scottish Highlands and Saoirse Ronan’s electric-orange hair. By the third third, you catch a glimpse of a much better movie lying beneath the surface, with the meeting of the two queens making for the only genuinely emotional moment of the flick, although even that is snatched away too quickly and, when the film ends, you will be left feeling empty, disappointed and mildly nauseous.

Mary is beset on all sides by treachery, hatred and betrayal, whilst Ronan (Lady Bird) is beset on all sides by terrible storytelling, historical inaccuracies and shambolic supporting actors. The real conflict here is actually Ronan battling to free herself from the awful script with a sensational range of emotions, though having her style cramped by the pantomime dialogue at every corner.

James McArdle, who plays Mary’s brother, offers a terribly good impression of a terribly bad impression of Braveheart and does little more than scowl through his ginger bushel of beard and squint out through a thick smear of eye-shadow. Meanwhile, Guy Pearce, playing the Queen’s advisor William Cecil, has all the charisma of a soggy hand-towel and wears a bemused expression as if he’s permanently smelling his own farts.

Margot Robbie (I, Tonya) is denied the screen-time she desperately needed to bring the character of Elizabeth together and whilst her British accent and ability to cry on cue are impressive, she falls short of what could easily have been a career-defining role. Screenwriter Beau Willimon’s reductive and overly simplified depiction of the queen is largely to blame, leaving us with a rendition that somehow manages to be more farcical than Miranda Richardson’s portrayal of the ginger-toupee-toting monarch in Blackadder 2. The sheer steel and grit that Elizabeth demonstrated in a male-saturated world is glossed over and replaced by an individual defined almost exclusively by her inability to produce an heir and frustration at her imperfect collage of red paper flowers. Exiting the theatre room, you will feel robbed of the story you thought you were there to see. A story where all the good parts of the movie were already given away in the trailer and the rest just feels like the out-takes from a bad episode of The Tudors. The tale of two of the greatest monarchs who ever-lived vying for the right to rule England and Scotland should have been one of the greatest cinematic events of the year. Instead, what you get is Ronan doing a live-action, 15-rated adaptation of Brave, whilst pox-scarred Queen Lizzie sulks in the background.

3/10