I am writing this review in English, because I put my faith in this "historical" movie, that wasn´t like that at all.
Always, the "Spanish Black Legend" is handy if you want to justify one of the favourite mislead historical facts in English history: the destruction of the "Armada Invencible" a huge Spanish fleet with the mission to invade England, in revenge for the piracy against Spanish galleons and the hostility from Elisabeth I against the Spanish Empire and her support to the Dutch.
This kind of movies makes me wonder why the English characters are written with respect, like the historical figures that they really are in this moment, instead, always, the enemy, whenever if they are French, Muslims, Zulus or Japanese, and in this case Philip II of Spain and his Empire are treated like cartoons.
The movie makes a great case against Roman Catholics in the XVI Century. That is correct, but you just have to explain historical facts and put in context that religion was a key fact in those times, as fanatics where the Anglicans as the Catholics, Turkish Muslems or even the Russian Tzar.
The English are superb making their victories the key historical facts in the universe, like in El-Alamein, Waterloo or Trafalgar. Or making victories from someone else their own, like in the D-Day in World War Two.
The "Armada Invencible" was a big Spanish defeat against, yes, the English fleet, the problems in northern Belgium and the weather conditions, and the lousy leadership. Spain´s defeat, not English victory. Spain was not defeated in the end of that war. They remained the strongest power in the world until the French destroyed their "tercios" in Rocoi and the Dutch defeated them by sea, more or lesss fifty years later.
Elisabeth: The Golden Age is one of many of the self assuring British pictures, almost like Goebels Propaganda sistem: if you repeat a lie 40,000 times it becomes a true historical fact, beautiful.
The acting of Jordi Molla (Philip II of Spain) is equal as good as Cate Blanchet´s.
I know that this was not a movie review but a historical review or something like that... don´t really care, is my opinion when I watched the movie.
1 comentario:
Wow. The first time I see someone telling it like it is. The Armada was literally blown away by a storm, not by Drake´s forces (according to British Scholars and the History Channel). I agree, the myth of the defeat was quite convenient back then, but no longer justifiable in the XXI Century. Just like Waterloo was truly a retreat of Napoleon´s army and a somewhat minor victory of the Prussians, the "defeat" of the Spanish Armada was just one more case of British luck. THAT you can´t take away from them!
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