MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS (Movie Review)

My brother Stuart and I viewed the movie Mary, Queen of Scots.

 Stuart was in Scotland while I was in Australia. 

The following is our take on it:

Internet Photo

Neil McKinlay: Dot and I watched Mary, Queen of Scots at a local movie theatre. I usually try to leave all my analytical apparatus at home so that I can simply enjoy the movie as a form of entertaining escapism. However, we weren’t long into the movie before I began to be distracted. I was left to wonder at my ignorance of how cosmopolitan Scotland (and England) was back in the late 1500s. Apparently the country was sexually, genderally(?!), and culturally revolutionary. As was England, whose queen, Elizabeth, thought herself more bloke than blokette! Who’d have thunk it? Why weren’t we taught any of this at school back in the day? Yes, of course, I’m being facetious!

Why spoil a good story, a great true story, with distracting diversity – if you are not trying to follow an agenda instead of actual history? All that spectacular Scottish scenery, mountains and moors, rivers and reefs, all those gallantly galloping horses with bobbing banners and flapping flags, all those great battle scenes, all those delicately embroidered costumes, all those magnificent cold-brick castles with their opulent throne-rooms, and their banquet halls with intricate tapestry-clad walls, all those conversations and supplications – spoiled! Wasted!

And what about Doctor Who, aka David Tennant, who played someone who, to the naked eye, certainly resembled John Knox, the one through whom “modern democracy was born” (Ridley, John Knox, p. 426). However, the long beard and hamburger hat were the only similarity. Instead, we saw some women-hating imposter ranting and railing, while at the same time women!, while singing, were dinging the pulpit in blads instead of him.
Great movie material was torn into strips and was flushed down the toilet to end up in that sceptic tank of oblivion.

Bottom line: I would not recommend this movie to anyone.

Stuart McKinlay: Yes, the trouble with Mary: It is an obnoxious appropriation of character and reputation to further our acceptance of perverse or perverted sexuality as enlightened normality. The historical figures' characters are traduced to support this corruption. Not for the gullible. I would recommend that the film should be seen, and considered as a marker in the decadence, not of the period, but the film makers. Very well made as an absorbing costume drama, though, and a scenic wonder for Scots especially to guess the marvellous locations, even if, on the whole, it is not a pretty picture.