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DVD Corner: The Other Boleyn Girl
Rebekah Hendershot |
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 Fifty years ago, The Other Boleyn Girl would have been called a costume drama. In between its galloping horses and palace intrigues are acres of satin and brocade, silk and fur, to dazzle the audience while people with English accents, both real and assumed, recite ever more improbable lines. Occasionally Shakespeare enters into it; more often its plots are more pedestrian. Costume dramas were about just that--costumes. Details in fabric outweighed details in character.
Welcome to the 21st century, where costume dramas are more and more frequently about ripping them off. But in the new field of costume dramas, as in the old, The Other Boleyn Girl manages to surprise. The film, which centers on the mostly historical Anne Boleyn and her mostly fictional sister Mary vying for the bed and heart of Henry VIII, is more about the latter goal than the former. It’s a story about sex and power that manages to earn a PG-13 rating while remaining entirely adult. For a movie about a king’s warring mistresses, The Other Boleyn Girl has a surprising amount to say about love--and its DVD (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, MSRP: $28.96) has a surprising amount to say about the details.
Based on the uber-bestselling novel by Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl has the advantage of pedigree and the disadvantage of 600 pages of source material. Director Justin Chadwick (“Bleak House“) and screenwriter Peter Morgan (The Queen) have solved the latter problem by gutting much of the novel and reducing it to its core as they see it--the complex relationship between two sisters whose family sees them as pawns in a political power game, and who eventually come to see themselves as pawns of another sort. The sisters--feisty, cunning Anne (Natalie Portman) and gentle, innocent Mary (Scarlett Johansson)--discuss their relationship more openly than might be expected of sisters in the Tudor period, but the temptation to put modern sensibilities into period dresses is probably overwhelming.
 The film’s first act is not found in the novel and takes the place of much of the excised material, showing Mary’s early marriage and the beginning of the sisters’ relationship with the king (Eric Bana), which will lead eventually to Mary being exiled and Anne--well, we all know what happens to Anne Boleyn. The overriding conceit of their rivalry is that while Mary is known to history primarily as Anne’s sister, each woman at different points becomes “the other Boleyn girl,” cast off and ignored while she makes her own plans.
The film was made in high definition, and even the regular-definition disc makes the small screen ooze color and detail. The extensive use of natural light and firelight in the scenes creates the look of a Renaissance painting, and the actors’ performances are just as carefully composed. On DVD, the curve of a fleur-de-lis speaks volumes. The glow of an emerald-green gown screams jealousy even more than Portman’s body language, and the unusually sharp details make the slow transition of Bana’s royal costumes into darker and more complex patterns all the more ominous. Texture and pattern are everywhere, and they always mean something; they are always clearly visible. You just couldn’t do this with Olivia de Havilland.
The single-disc edition is small but dense. In addition to the exquisite feature, there is a carefully selected assortment of bonus materials of higher-than-usual caliber: the deleted and extended scenes add small but meaningful details, like the fate of Mary’s mostly forgotten first husband; the featurette “To Be a Lady” focuses on the historical role of women in Tudor England; another featurette, “Translating History to the Screen,” explores the history behind the story with more focus than is normal; and “Members of the Court Biographies” details the historical figures portrayed in the film. There is also an audio commentary by Chadwick and a collection of HD screen tests that show, in their images of crew members slouching around a barn, how much the camera work contributed to the film’s painterly feel. Gregory appears throughout, lending her blessing to the project.
 In spite (or perhaps because) of the fact that romantic love as a concept was barely stirring in France while Henry VIII was ruling England, The Other Boleyn Girl has love aplenty, in many forms: the complex, often bitter love between sisters; the various loves of a brother who may or may not be homosexual and/or sleeping with his sister; the painful love of parents for children; the patient love of husbands and wives; the complicated love of a sovereign for a country and a throne. And then there’s the filmmaker’s love for his art, which drips from every frame of this lovingly crafted set piece. Maybe there’s something to be said for costume dramas after all.
The Other Boleyn Girl is now available on DVD.
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