Elizabeth and Essex (1939)
Nothing can bring this film to life. It is based on a script by Maxwell Anderson, who could not write. Though a giant of the American theatre for many years, his plays are pompous, stodgy, windy, pretentious, pseudo-poetic parades of pseudo-profound speeches, and that’s what kills this movie. The other problem is that Bette Davis is playing a woman of nearly seventy when in reality she is the same age as Errol Flynn. They’ve done everything they can to make her look ugly, but she doesn’t ever look old. Errol Flynn is, however, young and achingly beautiful. Apparently Flynn used to run after teenage girls — and one could see what they might see in him. He’s a good actor and so tender in the love scenes, it seemed somewhat voyeuristic watching him be so vulnerable. And one can see that he is so handsome that if he made love to you, you simply wouldn’t care if he was sincere or not. Not much happens in the movie, really, other than Elizabeth executing him. And poor Bette Davis has many vacuous Maxwell Anderson speeches, crumbling down Flynn’s side in a sad embrace: “I’m old, old, old’ she says, but she doesn’t look a day over 30. Lytton Strachey told this story better in his twin biography — Elizabeth and Essex, suggesting that Elizabeth would have put up with anything from Essex — and did — but Essex was ambitious — which is clear from the film — and crossed over too many boundaries. But according to Strachey someone told the queen that Essex had at one point referred to her as having a ‘crooked carcass.’ That was, as one might guess, the game changer. When it came to finally executing him, ridding her life of the Essex Trouble it was those horrible words that rang in her ears, and no longer could she be generous. (One of my gay friends once told me that his ex-lover told him ‘I am no longer sexually attracted to you’; he found those words impossible to forget.) It is, again, mad love, and Flynn tries to convince us he’s in love with Bette Davis, but because she’s not able to be who she was in real life — that ‘gorgeous bitch’ that we all love (and the b-word is only a compliment here) — it’s all just a little odd. He says “She’s got a witches brain, I love her, I hate her, I adore her,” all very well but with this pretentious forced dialogue not convincing enough. (The only other line I remember is: “Don’t count too much on the love of queens!” It has a gay application, and is all too true.) But I do feel I have to address something I said in my last blog, and express a feeling I have today. I’m hung over for sure. Yes, I’ve spent most of my weekends drunk (as I always do) — even during COVID-19. But during ‘social distancing’ I am not able to embrace the night, plunge into the friendly and/or dangerous dark — meet strangers I’ve always counted for kindness, or for, whatever. Instead I share drinks with friends in enclosed spaces hoping not to be arrested for having fun. At any rate, today I am somewhat somnambulant, it all seems like a dream. Perhaps I just haven’t woken up yet, perhaps this blog will wake me up. But I do have the worrisome, numbing sensation that nothing I do matters anymore. This is, I think, actually true. It’s related to the fact that suddenly everyone has the same excuse, for anything. It’s COVID-19. What is utterly devastating to my sense of reality is that deadlines, commitment, plans, hopes, fantasies whatever, don’t matter anymore because the future is in limbo, and there’s no way one could hold anyone else to anything, or. demand a response, or say — ‘why didn’t you turn up?’ because the inevitable answer would be ‘COVID is getting me down,’ or ‘I’m sick with IT,’ or ‘I’m worried because my uncle lives in a nursing home,’ or of course, inevitably, ‘I can’t leave the house because of IT.’ But I console myself with the idea that life is a dream, so this is nothing new. I mentioned this idea in my last email, along with the idea that love is a dream — which as a concept is a lot easier to understand, and perhaps, easier to stomach. But to speak of ‘life as a dream’ seems more bold and eminently arguable. It is the title of Calderon’s play about Prince Segismundo who is imprisoned in a tower by his father (due to a seer’s prediction that his son will someday kill him and destroy the country). But the kind king frees his son briefly, and Segismundo is a prince first the first time — in his own mind — until his father imprisons him again, convincing the temporary prince that being a prince was merely a dream. (The whole of Taming of the Shrew is also a dream, dreamed by a drunk named Christopher Sly. ) What if life is a dream? It means that when we die, we wake up, which is a cheerful thought. I like the idea that life is a dream because I was in therapy for many years with a woman named Anne Madigan, a kind of saint of psychotherapy (she was the therapist for a whole generation of Toronto artists at one point — I know she counselled Daniel MacIvor and Tracy Wright — I saw Tracy in Anne’s office waiting room once). Anyway Anne was a narrative therapist, which means she encouraged you to look at the story that you had created for your own life, because we all do that. Whenever you say “I’ll never fall in love” or “I always fall in love with selfish idiots” you are living your narrative; you have written a script for yourself and you must live it, you have no choice. But Anne tried to teach us how to change our narratives. My narrative at the time was “I can’t survive without being the artistic director of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.’ It was amazing how easy it was to change that narrative, and so I quit my job. All fine and good, but is life actually real, or is it a dream? Well, I think the whole notion of reality is misleading. It’s not that a table isn’t a table, or a glass of water isn’t drinkable. It’s that the facts of your life don’t matter really, it’s the significance that you give to them, and that’s the dream. Some people lose both their legs and become heroes — that is their dream. And others lose both their legs and commit suicide; the dream they are in is more depressing but nonetheless just as ‘real.’ I know you won’t take this idea seriously. But, really, you might. Because it releases you — not from responsibility — but from tragic necessity. And it is something finally to say to all those that would say to you; ‘you have to face facts!’ ‘Well I don’t really. There are none. I make them up, we all do, and I’m going to make some up now, thank you!’ I am making up the idea that someone is going to read this and that it matters. I am making up the idea that certain people love me, or a beautiful man will kiss me again for no reason (yes that did happen and I’ll tell you the story someday) but with COVID I’m not sure. Is that uncertainty part of the COVID dream? I’m not going to say “my dream has become a nightmare.’ But I will say the dream I’m living in right now is a lot calmer than usual (do I like that calm? — no not at all). And it is a dream in which I have never felt so strongly that the only thing that actually matters — because it is the only thing that is really real — is what I am writing here, now.
