http://www.moviesonline.ca/movienews_13112.html Shekhar Kapur Interview, Elizabeth The Golden Age *Movie *Elizabeth The Golden Age <http://www.moviesonline.ca/film6359.htm> *Posted By*: Sheila Roberts<http://www.moviesonline.ca/author.php?posted=Sheila%20Roberts>/ Source <http://www.moviesonline.ca/movienews_13112.html> *Related News :* Drama Movie News<http://www.moviesonline.ca/movies-Drama.htm>, Movie Interviews <http://www.moviesonline.ca/movie_interviews.php> , Movie Interviews <http://www.moviesonline.ca/movie_interviews.php> ,
<http://www.moviesonline.ca/movie_posters.php?id=10119>MoviesOnline sat down with Shekhar Kapur <http://www.moviesonline.ca/movienews_13112.html#>at the Los Angeles press day for his new movie, "Elizabeth: The Golden Age," which he directed from an original screenplay by William Nicholson ("Gladiator") and Michael Hirst ("Elizabeth"). Reprising the roles they originated in seven-time Academy Award-nominated "Elizabeth," Cate Blanchett<http://www.moviesonline.ca/celeb-Cate-Blanchett.htm>and Geoffrey Rush <http://www.moviesonline.ca/celeb-Geoffrey-Rush.htm> return for a gripping historical thriller laced with treachery and romance. Joining them in the epic is Clive Owen <http://www.moviesonline.ca/celeb-Clive-Owen.htm>as Sir Walter Raleigh, a dashing seafarer and newfound temptation for Elizabeth, and Abbie Cornish<http://www.moviesonline.ca/celeb-Abbie-Cornish.htm>, Elizabeth's favorite lady-in-waiting, Bess. In "Elizabeth," the story focused on the early, somewhat uncertain years of the fledgling ruler's reign. The young queen faced an uphill struggle to hold on to her throne, outfoxing conspirators and deceivers at every turn. Never certain which of her court and advisers could be trusted, the headstrong and savvy Elizabeth emerged at the end of the film as a Queen, firmly in charge of her destiny. "Elizabeth: The Golden Age<http://www.moviesonline.ca/movienews_13112.html#>" commences a decade after the period covered in "Elizabeth" and examines the glorious middle years of her rule when Queen Elizabeth I (Blanchett) faces bloodlust for her throne and familial betrayal. Growing keenly aware of the changing religious and political tides of late 16th century Europe, Elizabeth finds her rule openly challenged by the Spanish King Philip II (Jordi Molla <http://www.moviesonline.ca/celeb-Jordi-Molla.htm>)--with his powerful army and sea-dominating armada--determined to restore England to Catholicism. Preparing to go to war to defend her empire, Elizabeth struggles to balance ancient royal duties with an unexpected vulnerability in her love for Raleigh (Owen). As she charts her course abroad, her trusted advisor, Sir Francis Walsingham (Rush), continues his masterful puppetry of Elizabeth's court at home--and her campaign to solidify absolute power. Shekhar Kapur started his career a far distance from the film industry, taking his degree with honors in economics from the University of Delhi and starting work as a chartered accountant, a corporate planner for Burma Oil and a management consultant in the U.K. After several years, he decided to leave this world behind him and returned to India to pursue a career in the film and entertainment industry. In addition to his success as a commercial director, Kapur has directed some of India's most celebrated and successful films<http://www.moviesonline.ca/movienews_13112.html#>to date – including "Mr. India," which is widely regarded as India's greatest-ever mainstream film for children; the acclaimed "Masooum"; and one of India's most controversial films, "Bandit Queen," which caught the attention of the worldwide film community when it became the rage at the Cannes Film Festival. After this, Kapur directed "Elizabeth," his first English-language film which was nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Actress. Then he went on to direct the film version of the best-selling book "The Four Feathers" for Paramount/Miramax. Kapur's creative interests are not limited solely to directing. As a young man, he worked as a leading actor in Indian film, as India's first celebrity male model and as a chat-show host for three seasons on "On the Other Hand," for Channel 4 India. It was Kapur who brought the idea of the hit show "Bombay Dreams" to Andrew Lloyd Webber, co-creating the base story with Webber and persuading him to bring on the now-acclaimed Indian composer A.R. Rahman for the music. Kapur also founded the Intent Corporation with best-selling author and guru Deepak Chopra, to "provoke and platform the emerging Asian culture to the rest of the world." Through Intent he has founded Virgin Comics and Imagination, a venture with Richard Branson's Virgin brand – involving approximately 100 artists and writers in Bangalore and in New York who create new characters for multimedia exploitation in the international marketplace. Kapur has many other projects in development, including the feature film "Paani (Water)," which tells the tale of a major city 20 years from now, in which water has all but run out; an animated rap musical entitled "A Suitable Cockroach," currently in production with Prana Studios, one of India's leading animation companies; and the film and stage musical of "Rasputin," written by Michael Hirst, the writer of "Elizabeth" and co-author of "Elizabeth: The Golden Age." "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" brings Kapur back to his passion for directing and continuing the story and journey of Elizabeth I, and reunites him with much of the acclaimed cast and crew from the original picture. Shekhar Kapur is a highly versatile and accomplished artist. Here's what he had to tell us about his new film: *Q: What drew you to explore Elizabeth's conflict between wanting personal intimacy and how she has to remain aloof as a ruler, and if you did a third Elizabeth movie, where would you set it historically and what would you want to explore thematically?* SHEKHAR KAPUR: Can I change the word aloof to divine? I think just like Diana, when we worship people who are in absolute power, we worship them and when we expect them to be divine, in a way they realize that they should be divine. And Elizabeth actually believed that all kings and all queens ruled by divine right. So the conflict was not between aloofness and mortality, from divinity and mortality, and so the conflict is, how can you be divine, or you could be President Clinton, but you can't be mortal, you can't have a little affair somewhere. Those are the aspects of absolute power. What happens when you get into absolute power, and especially at that time it was much more valid in terms of the divine right of kings to rule and queens to rule, so it is can you retain any kind of mortal aspirations of having relationships and be divine at the same time? That's the question. So the first film really was about power, the second one is about absolute power and divinity, and if you're asking me about the third one, it's obviously if you've been divine and kind of immortal all your life, what happens when you're facing you mortality? How do you, if you've been this great being and suddenly you realize that you're going to die, and in death you're like everybody else. Suddenly you plummet down. So there was something about Elizabeth that was very interesting, that when she realized that she was going to die, she stood for twelve hours, or something like that, or eighteen hours, history has said, but we know that she thought that if she sat down that she would die, so she would not sit down. So it was like her will against the will of death. So in the last film I set up the idea of divinity in the last scene, and this (film) we set up the idea of immortality leading to mortality. That's a very complex answer to your question. I've just been told that I'm the fourth act after three great acts. No pressure. *Q: Would you define this Elizabeth as historical fiction or historical fantasy or a combination of the two?* SHEKHAR KAPUR: I would describe all history as fiction and interpretation. When I just finished this film, somebody sent me a script of Mary Queen of Scots. And I read it just for the interest of it, and it was a completely different interpretation of history. Elizabeth is an absolute bitch, and Mary of Scots is this great romantic noble being. Now you ask the Irish, and they have a totally different aspect of it; ask any Catholic and they'll give you a totally different aspect of history. Imagine that Spain actually – the Armada had succeeded, and the history books would have been written in Spanish and we would have been talking in Spanish, but now try to imagine how Philip would have narrated history. History has always been an interpretation. So what makes it valid to us is to tell a contemporary story and use history as a moral story that is more relevant to our times, because I do believe that civilizations that don't learn from history are civilizations that are doomed to make the same mistakes again and again, which is why this film starts with the idea of fundamentalism against tolerance. It's not Catholic against Protestant; it's a very fundamental form of Catholicism. It was the time of the Spanish Inquisition and against a woman whose half her population was Protestant, half was Catholic, and there were enough bigots in her Protestant Parliament to say, "Just kill them all. Go on a pogrom." And she was constantly saying no. She was constantly on the side of tolerance. So you interpret history to tell the story that is relevant to us now. I used to hate history when I was a kid, couldn't handle it until somebody made it entertaining for me, so it's my job as a filmmaker also to make it entertaining. *Q: Can you talk about Samantha Morton<http://www.moviesonline.ca/celeb-Samantha-Morton.htm>'s performance? I thought she was just amazing.* SHEKHAR KAPUR: You know what, I have to tell you, when I was going in everybody said, "Oh you're going to have a lot of trouble with Samantha." Samantha and I had five conversations, five conversations, and she said, "Do you agree with the following, let's talk about it, did she believe she was Queen?" I said yes. "Did she believe she had the divine right to rule, and Elizabeth was a usurper and a bastard?" I said yes. And we talked about her conviction that she needed – then we added to it the fact that she was a total manipulator, and then we added to the idea that actually she became the Queen, she became divine when she was going to her death. In that scene where she's going to that block, the block was her marriage alter, she was being married to God and she suddenly, finally, came to terms with being divine and queen at her death. So Samantha was like a dream to work through it, she was fantastic. She was just fantastic. And sometimes you're so taken aback by an artist's own interpretation. The only argument we had is did she have a French accent or did she have a Scottish accent? She was a Scottish queen, but accents are very funny. We assume that everybody at that time spoke Queen's English, but we have no idea, and I can bet everything that that's not how they spoke; it's just the genre of filmmaking. And in France, did everybody speak with that kind of French accent that we've now come to term as French accent? I bet you they were from all over France. There must be a hundred accents going on in the Court, so ultimately she was more comfortable – she's the Queen of Scots, she believes she's Queen, I want to go with a Scottish accent, go with it. That was it. *Q: The first Elizabeth was a smaller independent film.* SHEKHAR KAPUR: It was for Polygram, yes. *Q: How did it get from that to big Universal?* SHEKHAR KAPUR: Polygram got to be big Universal. I don't know, it's a difficult question. I make films very instinctively. I didn't go out to make a bigger film. I just went out to make a film that had, if you're talking about issues of mortality and divinity and immortality, you cannot but give it a slightly Biblical look, you cannot but give it a slightly epic look, and so therefore the story and the subtext of the story I'm telling defines the way I shoot it, and I guess the studios looked at it and then (determined) it's a big film. It just becomes big when you shoot it. I don't make those decisions, I just instinctively go to shoot what I feel is right, and then the film becomes bigger or smaller, and ultimately still only bigger or smaller after it releases really. *Q: How do you define your Hollywood experiences? Would you like to come back and make American films? * SHEKHAR KAPUR: There is no filmmaker that can completely say, "I love the politics of filmmaking." And the bigger the film, the greater the politics, it's the nature of filmmaking now. What Hollywood does have is an extremely, extremely efficient distribution and at this moment there is no other system, if you like, that has the ability to get your film to be seen by as many people in the world as possible, and to publicize your film. Is it perfect? No. Is there something about independent cinema that attracts every director? Of course there is. You'd like to completely control your film and you'd like to fight off any other control on it, but it's never been any different. I've been making films in India, where you won't believe this, every film I made I mortgaged my house to get the money to make the film, and if the film didn't do well I would go to the financier and I'd say, "Listen, it's going to take ten years for you to go to court to get my house, there's a easier way," and the easier way was always was, "Give me some more money, I'll make another film and you'll recover your money." So look, I come from that kind of filmmaking, I come from that where all films are as independent as could be. So am I going to be scared by Hollywood? No, I used to make films – everybody would say, 'What did you sell in the ??" I said, "I sold my car, I sold my wife's jewelry, I sold everything to make the film." That where I come from. *Q: Can you talk about approaching the creative process?* SHEKHAR KAPUR: For me, personally? There is a context and a subtext to the film that you're telling. The first film was about Elizabeth in an arena where she was fighting external forces within her court, so that's what the film was. If you noticed the design of the film, it was filled with darkness around her in her own court. This film is a much more internal film, it's a much more internal battle. That battle was much more about the threats that she could be killed at any time. Here it's a far more internal battle and the threat and the darkness is not within her court. Her court is much lighter, much, much lighter, but the threat is a darkness that's coming from outside. The threat is coming from outside. It's coming in the form of the Inquisition. It's coming in the form of the Armada. So you approach it differently in that way. *Q: The film deals with a woman in an absolute position of power. What does your film have to say about a woman being in power especially leading up to our Presidential election?* SHEKHAR KAPUR: Personally? I don't want to make a political statement. I would feel more comfortable with this world if women were more in power. I would feel safer, a little safer. I think women have deep down a feminine spirit that is more tolerant, more compassionate, and I hope that more women come to power. It's not always true, but there's a sense of that. *Q: When working with Abbie and Kate on the relationship between their characters, did you encourage them to make it more a friendship?* SHEKHAR KAPUR: You know our film works on many levels, it works on a psychological, or political, on a mythic level, on a ? plot level. I saw them as one person, it was more than a friendship. I saw Elizabeth and Beth as the same person, one representing the spirit side of a human being, and one representing the mortal, the more sexual; the more mortal side of a human being. They were two people rolled into one. And what Raleigh's job was to come and do was to extract one from the other, he just took the mortal side away and let her free to be mortal. So on a mythic level that's how I looked at it, so I saw them as the same person. It was beyond a friendship, it was a deep sense of – well, on a psychological side you could see that she was living vicariously though Beth, Beth was like her doll. It was in many ways the younger sister, elder sister relationship, where the elder sister's too afraid to go out and make physical contact, and encourages (the other). So if you look at it psychologically, it has a lot of resonances in relationships that we've seen, but mythically I saw them as the same person, and one had to be taken away for her to go fight for them. *Q: You said you saw the first movie again; can you tell us what your thoughts were when you went back and saw it?* SHEKHAR KAPUR: I'd forgotten how sexy it was. I had forgotten the film. But you know I'm a director, I just keep finding faults with everything that I do. I just was whipping myself saying, "Oh my God, Shekhar, you were so childish then." But generally I enjoyed the film. There were bits of it I thought could be better done, but I'm sure I'd feel that about this film too. My thoughts were that any doubt that I had about being able to make the second film different in its look, in its feel, in its subtext and its story were dispelled when I saw that film again. I think any doubts that any one of us had – all of us had doubts, we'd forgotten the film, the previous film became some kind of an iconic being and we needed to reexamine and take away the iconism to really look at it and say, "Oh yeah, well, it was another movie <http://www.moviesonline.ca/movienews_13112.html#>. Now we can make a different movie." When people then, when I was making the film, talked to me about the last film, I would say, "What last film?" In fact I was in Melbourne with Geoffrey recently and he said, "Do you remember everything you said to me about the previous film?" And I'd forgotten, I just brushed it out of my mind completely. *Q: Will it take another ten years to make a third one?* SHEKHAR KAPUR: Oh God, I hope not. I think Cate will survive, I may not. I really hope not. Really hope not, no. "Elizabeth: The Golden Age" opens in theaters on October 12th.
