The REAL Boleyn Girl

Every month I swear I’m going to drop my HBO package. It’s overpriced and it has nothing but lousy action movies on it that I never, ever, ever watch. Seriously, is everyone in the United States or the world involved in running drugs and selling sex? There are more hitmen on HBO than could possibly exist in real life. I don’t care who’s in a movie or how good it’s supposed to be, if it has hitmen in it, or if the plot involves drugs, prostitution, or other unsavory parts of life, the chances of me watching it plummet. I’m not a prude. I’m simply not interested. I find those stories boring. Yawn-worthy. They are, in fact, so far removed from my own life that I can relate better to a film about space aliens than I can to films about those subjects.

So, that’s my general level of dissatisfaction with HBO. I saw an ad on one of my other channels this week that said the Starz network and assorted channels were going to be having a free weekend. I promptly turned them on to see what they had to offer. It wasn’t much better than what they show on HBO. I did find one movie that interested me even though I knew I was going to have problems with it.

The Other Boleyn Girl started out as a novel by Phillippa Gregory. It’s about Mary Boleyn, the OLDER sister of Anne Boleyn, who became the second wife of Henry VIII of England in 1533. It was turned into a big screen movie in 2008 starring Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson.

Now, I used to belong (still do, but I’m No Mail) to a very good Tudor history e-mail list. I’ve been hearing about this book for several years so I knew that, from an historical point of view, it was grossly inaccurate and that it portrayed Anne Boleyn in the worst possible light. I think the movie softened things up a bit but, historically, it was still pretty bad.

The movie completely overlooks the fact that both girls spent considerable portions of their childhoods in France. And, very importantly, it totally whitewashes Mary. Mary, you see, was the mistress of the King of France while she was in France. He had some very uncharming things to say about her which I won’t repeat here, but suffice it to say that her reputation was completely ruined when she returned to England. It’s no wonder that she quickly became Henry VIII’s mistress as well. Not to put too fine a point on it, the girl was easy.

None of this factual information is included in the film. Instead, Mary is portrayed as a shy, sweet, innocent young girl when she meets Henry. He is the one who commands that she becomes his mistress. Yeah, right. And Anne, of course, is the bossy, mean sister.

Actually, I thought Natalie Portman was splendid as Anne. I really didn’t think she was a good choice for the role but she was excellent and I thought she even looked quite a bit like her. Scarlett Johansson looked like Mary, too, with her fair coloring. She probably acted somewhat like Mary -- kind of clueless -- but Mary was by no means the goody-two-shoes that she is in the film.

The whole film just reeks of revisionist history. According to this movie Henry bestowed titles and riches on the Boleyn family because of Mary. Nope. Didn’t happen. The Boleyns got virtually nothing out of Mary’s liaison with Henry. Mary wasn’t very smart and she didn’t hold out for much. She and her family didn’t benefit much at all from the affair. And, Mary wasn’t married when Henry began fooling around with her. She only married later -- and didn’t get a very good marriage out of it. There is considerable doubt, too, over whether the children she had were Henry’s -- there were two, a son and a daughter. Many people think that if they had been Henry’s he would have provided better for them. Afterall, he had a son earlier by his mistress Bessie Blount and he made him a duke and even considered marrying him to his daughter, Mary Tudor (Katherine of Aragon’s daughter). Henry wasn’t miserly and if he thought Mary Boleyn’s son (or daughter) was his he would have done well by him. Yet, he didn’t.

The fact is that Mary was a momentary diversion and she ceased to have any importance at all after Henry met Anne -- who had been in France when Henry met Mary. After Anne arrived on the scene Mary didn’t matter at all.

Unfortunately, the character of Henry in this film is simply dreadful. Once again Henry is portrayed as a monster, which he was not. Certainly not in the early years of his reign when he was still young and handsome. And, really, is it so very difficult to cast an actor who has fair looks? Hello casting directors! Henry had blond/reddish-gold hair and blue eyes!!!! Yet all the actors you see playing Henry are dark and brooding looking. The man was known for his humor and cheerful disposition for a long time. He was very intelligent and could be very charming. It was only much later that his sudden anger and calculating darker side took over. Don’t look to this film to find a nuanced performance of Henry. This guy is brutal and always angry about something.

The costumes are beautiful. The sets are average and don’t display much variety. One setting looks very much like another. Everything could be set in the same castle for all the viewer can tell. You have no idea where you are most of the time.

Time periods are crunched together and you don’t get any proper idea of how much time is passing. At the beginning of the film Anne looks like a young girl and she still looks that way at the end, even though, chronologically, some 16 years must have passed. It’s very disconcerting. Everything in the movie is out of order -- Anne is sent to France after her ENGAGEMENT (not marriage) to Henry Percy, when, of course, she was only sent to Hever at that time. That was in 1525. By that time Anne had long returned from France. Anne’s first meeting at court with Henry is shown after that when it was actually around 1522. And so on.

Watch the film for a bit of fun but don’t trust it at all for historical accuracy. If you want genuine history about the Boleyns visit this site. Better yet, read Eric W. Ives’ excellent biography of Anne Boleyn and courtlife, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn.