The film Anonymous, about Shakespeare and was he a fraud, is opening today. I have been looking forward to seeing this film and thought I was going crazy when I searched and searched, but couldn’t find it at any theater in Las Vegas!
It took some Google searching to discover Sony has fiddled with the release and decided to open small (only 250 theaters nationwide) and let the film build up word-of-mouth before releasing it wide. It looks like a great cast, has gotten great reviews and really wish I could go see it today - damn.
So I guess I have to wait
To those lucky enough to live in a larger metropolitan area and can see the film, feel free to post your thoughts here, but please don’t spoil the film! (Using spoiler boxes is fine - I can look at those later…)
So if you get a chance to see it, let me know what you think.
Great reviews? It’s currently sitting at 43% fresh at Rotten Tomatoes.
I’m boycotting this movie because I’m sick of the incessant ads for it on NPR. I don’t know if it was a national program or a local one, but the local NPR even did an hour-long infomercial on this movie today.
Yeah, sorry to come across like a threadshitter, but it seems to be an attempt at a thriller set in an Elizabethan setting but with virtually no basis in reality except the fact that it uses the names of people who actually lived back then.
If the movie is good as a thriller on its own merits, I might be interested, but I am not hearing that either…
The concept looked interesting to me until I found out that the director is a true Shakespeare denier. He actually BELIEVES that Shakespeare didn’t write the works attributed to him! That put me off in the same way that supernatural movies that overly play up it being “based on a true story” put me off. The world is dumb enough as it is. Sure, entertain me. I don’t believe in ghosts but I love ghost movies. I don’t believe in aliens but I love alien movies. And so on. It’s all in good fun but DON’T try to tell me it’s really real because I’ll go from “hey that looks interesting/like fun” to “fuck you, and the ignorant masses who’ll believe that it’s based on a true story.”
It’s possible I’ll see Anonymous, but I won’t pay for it.
Yeah, when I first heard about it I thought it could be really funny. But then I saw the trailer and realized that they’re playing it straight instead of as a comedy. So not interested in that.
What Equipose said. It’s from the director of some of my most hated films, so I’ll definitely be giving this a miss. I did enjoy some of the criticism in the wiki article though.
I’m hesitant to insert myself into this thread, as the Stratfordians have the weaker case, and know it, so they usually try to compensate using cheap insults, circular logic, arguments from authority, and similar dodges that make discussion a waste of time. For me, the biography of William Shakspere of Stratford never made sense against the canon; when I investigated the Oxfordian theory, it fit perfectly, and keeps fitting as further evidence turns up. My understanding of the works is all the richer for it, as it is for knowing of the lives behind the works of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Franz Kafka, J. D Salinger, Sinclair Lewis, and about 42 zillion others. Naturally, I’m curious to see the movie, even though I know they combined two popular suppositions in a particularly icky way.
Getting in a pre-emptive attack is not a good way to start an actual discussion.
Fact is, there is no documentary evidence to support the alternative authorship theories. Sure, it’s not impossible someone else wrote the plays, but I see no reason to think it’s the most likely scenario.
Considering there is absolutely no evidence supporting Oxford (or anyone else) as the author, that’s a neat trick. And, of course, there’s the problem with the plays referring to events that happened after Oxford died . . . .
Conversely, there is no evidence disproving that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. It’s all just speculation, often based upon the ignorance of the person who introduced it.
You’re going to regret doing this. I’ve found from experience that some people are surprisingly irrational on this subject.
I’ve read several reviews of this movie, and all were negative. Maybe I just missed the “great” ones, but I doubt it.
When I started this thread, I had read the review from the LA Times (very good) and from Roger Ebert (very good) and Micheal Phillips (also very good).
I see now that other critics have not been so kind.
Still, I would like to see this film.
Rather amazed at the amount of bile for a film nobody here has apparently seen yet.
I still intend to see it when it gets here to Las Vegas and will come back to report.
To be fair, much of the criticism I’ve seen has focused on the gross historical errors made in the film. If you don’t care about that (and most people aren’t even going to notice), then that’s not going to matter. Just be clear that you’re not seeing a documentary! 
I am aware of that - and Shakespeare In Love wasn’t exactly a detailed accurate account either, but quite good.
JFK was interesting, but I doubt many thought every scene and word was accurate, and there have been quite a few good historical films with some fiddling with facts.
I know some people might buy into the theory that Shakespeare didn’t even really exist, or never wrote a word, but it still sounds like an interesting premise to see “what if” and take it with a grain of salt.
I want to see the film for the acting, for the scenery and for the story. Whether or not I buy into the conspiracy theory will probably be irrelevant to whether I like the film or not.
I doubt many people thought every scene was accurate, but I suspect a lot of them thought the basic facts were accurate, and they were not. I’ve read that even JFK conspiracy theorists were annoyed with some of the liberties Stone took.
I’m not sure how to feel about Anonymous in that it’s not wrong to make up dramas using historical figures. Dramatists have always done that. Shakespeare did it, and I’m not sure what his audience’s expectations were with regard to truthfulness. I do know that the makers of Anonymous appear to be trying to pass this off as a plausible history, and the plot of the movie is even more absurd than the garbage that Shakespeare deniers usually trot out. So maybe they’re open about the fact that it’s just entertainment, and even though there’s no way I’m seeing the movie, perhaps we shouldn’t assume people are going to fall for this ridiculousness.
80% of any Roger Ebert rating is based upon the visuals. If the film looks good, he’ll generally rate it highly.
I have no problem with alternative history, but like others here I object strongly to historical revisionism. It cheapens history. Here are a couple quotes from the director:
That immediately raises my hackles. It’s a very poor argument, we simply don’t know what formal (or possibly more importantly, informal) education Shakespeare received, who he spoke to and what he read. In any case, his plays contain a number of historical anachorisms, such as Trojan characters quoting Plato, who lived much later.
Here is a quote from the actor playing the Earl of Oxford:
Now, if they were trying to sell it as a work of speculative fiction, I’d have no problem with that at all. It’s not terribly important, it’s mostly just marketing obllox, but it does immediately turn me off the film.
In isolation. it may be an effective piece of drama, but it’s rightly hated for having no respect for the actual evidence.
(Emphasis added.)
Somewhere in the afterlife, Richard III is laughing his ass off. “See how you like being character-assassinated, Shakey Boy!” 
It does bother me somewhat to see Derek Jacobi getting involved in this nonsense, but just because you can act Shakespeare’s words doesn’t mean you know anything about Shakespeare himself.
Shakespeare: “Et tu, Dick? You had your character assassinated by me, the greatest writer in the history of the English stage. I’m having my character assassinated by the guy who did the bad Godzilla.”
I don’t think the Shakespearean Authorship site makes cheap insults, circular logic, or arguments from authority.
From what I understand, the movie makes Shakespeare a drunken lout, and pins on him the murder of Kit Marlowe. If they’re trying to pass that off as plausible, they don’t impress me.