Long Live the Queens

By Tony Buchsbaum


2006 was quite a year for Helen Mirren. First, she got to play Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry VIII. Then she got to play Elizabeth II, mother-in-law of Diana. Even more remarkabe that her stellar performances is the fact that the awards people got it right: she deserved every single statuette she received.

In Elizabeth I, Mirren plays the queen as randy royalty who knows just what her virgin image means to her advisors and her country. Though Elizabeth isn’t a young woman, Mirren plays her as one, almost coquettishly delivering lines and all but batting her eyes seductively. She knows that sex is politics, so she keeps her cards concealed most of the time: why capitulate when a flirt will do? She's mad for the Earl of Leicester, played by Jeremy Irons with his usual dose of knowing, almost amused gravity, but she can’t marry him. It just wouldn’t do. So her game plays on, much to her hidden dismay.

Elizabeth I sparkles in every way. Its sets are sumptuous, its music score by Rob Lane is magnificent, and its costumes bring countless paintings of the queen to shimmering, staggering life.

There are moments I have watched again and again, none so much as the scene when the queen visits the troops as they await invasion. Mirren delivers a speech to raise the kingdom’s dead, and the music soars, and even the queen herself is overwhelmed with emotion.

What makes the story so satisfying, though, is that Elizabeth, far from doomed, is simply disappointed in every area of her life. Her advisors refuse to allow her to marry a French king, she herself refuses to marry Leicester, and later, his nephew, the Earl of Essex, who is just too young. He is a useful plaything meant to keep her young, but he's far from king material.

I especially loved the brutal scene where Mary Queen of Scots is beheaded; the executioner must strike twice, and it’s wincingly good fun. Elizabeth’s reaction, after forbidding her cousin’s execution, is one in a long series of scenes in which the queen becomes all but a raving lunatic. Betrayal brings that out in a person. All anyone can do is get out of her way; the queen is pissed as hell, and Mirren gets to munch on the scenery. It’s a thing to behold.

Mirren chews even more scenery, although more stoically, in The Queen, in which she portrays Great Britain’s current monarch. Here, the story picks up just as Diana has been killed in an accident in Paris, and the film is a study of how the princess’s mother-in-law closes down the royal house to allow the family to mourn in private, much to the frustration of Prime Minister Tony Blair and the rest of her subjects. (Strange. France and queens named Elizabeth don't mix well in either film.)

In a way, The Queen is one long scene of denial, and what’s amazing is how much color Mirren can wring from what is essentially a one-note woman. We don’t know much of anything about the queen except the stuff caricatures are made of, but Mirren makes her human. You may not like her, but you believe her, and that’s what makes the film unerringly great fun to watch.

Michael Sheen, as Blair, looks like a twenty-something kid who’s out of his league — and if Blair was in real life, so is Sheen here. James Cromwell plays prince Philip as a character even colder than his wife, all hard edges and absolutes. The foil he provides Mirren is subtle and complex; next to him, she seems downright ambivalent, though it’s her word the royal house follows.

Both films are now available on DVD, and both are well-worth watching. Oddly, Elizabeth I, produced as a four-hour television film, is far more movie-like than The Queen, which feels (perhaps intentionally) like a TV movie. How wonderful, though, to have Helen Mirren in both films, unintentionally painting echoes and shadows of each queen into the other, portraying conflicted women who both embrace and rebuff their times and their people.

Planet Amazing

By Tony Buchsbaum


In recent weeks, the Discovery Channel has been showing the epic BBC series Planet Earth. It’s been an astounding look at our planet’s last wildernesses in all their considerable glory. And I do mean considerable.

The 11 episodes are something to see, with footage of the sort that most documentarians can only dream about. Imagine visions of the deep ocean, where strangely-shaped creatures live in complete darkness, waiting and foraging for whatever scraps drift down into their neighborhood. Imagine a herd of caribou fleeing mosquitoes rather than wolves. Or a polar bear taking its first steps into daylight. Or tons of krill. Or a mother humpback whale helping its calf breathe. Or caves populated by thousands of bats and the millions of cockroaches that call their guano pile home. Or massive stalactites in the deepest caves of Carlsbad Caverns. Or a massive Great White Shark striking a seal, lifting itself fully out of the water in ultra-slow motion.

I can’t help but imagine being on the scene, actually capturing these images. Planet Earth is certainly about earth, but it’s also about the tenacity of the men and women who created it. Some of them camped out for weeks or months in the worst possible conditions, just to get a few feet of film. Frankly, their dedication and endurance are as humbling fruits of their labor.

As they worked, they employed the latest techniques and technology, everything from fully-rotating helicopter gimbals to hot air balloons, from deep-sea submersible cameras to cable systems that allow for never-before-seen views of the rainforest floor. But you’ll never notice it, and you’d never know about it if guys like me didn’t mention it. But the making of this documentary — in 200 locations over five years — is half the story.

While this series is about the visual wonder of earth, it is also about the relentless search for food — the circle of life. Every episode features creatures simply looking for their next meal. Penguins are cute, but they’re also quite appetizing for a hungry seal. Likewise, elephants are big lumberers, but when a pride of lions is giving chase, they’re faster than you ever thought they could be.

These eleven adventures (and that’s what they are) will show you non-human life on mountains and in fresh water, in deep and shallow seas, in and on ice, in deserts and jungles.

But there’s more. The Discovery Channel is showing a slightly truncated version of Planet Earth, trimmed to meet the habits and schedules of American viewers and networks. If you missed it, and even if you didn’t, the original series is available in a glorious 5-DVD set. This set includes longer versions of the episodes as well as plentiful extras: mini-features on some of the most challenging bits to film as well as a three-part documentary on the future of Planet Earth.

If you’d prefer to read and turn pages, the entire experience has been captured in a coffee-table book called Planet Earth: As You’ve Never Seen It Before. If the footage is beautiful, being able to study frames for as long as you wish is something else again. The book features hundreds of such images, as well as informative text by series producer Alastair Fothergill.

And while you’re turning those pages, make sure you’re listening to George Fenton’s spectacular score, which is available in a 2-CD set. It contains most of the main cues from the series. This is majestic music, as grand as the images they accompany. Fenton has created nothing less than a great romance, with soaring themes and memorable melody. Is the romance between life and its planet, or is it more about the dance between species, that endless circle of life? Either way, this is music that rejoices in our planet’s natural magic.

Planet Earth is our home, to be sure, but many parts of it are also, even in the 21st century, our great frontier. At the opening of the British version, narrator David Attenborough says that 100 years ago earth’s population was 1.5 billion and that today it’s six billion. The politics of that statement aren’t subtle. No one can escape — nor should we — the debate about global warming. If there’s even a tiny chance we can save the stunning beauty of our home, not to mention our own societies, by being a bit more green, then we owe it to ourselves and our children to do just that. If there’s a doubt in your mind about that, watch this series…and feel your priorities shift.

McCartney and Ecce Cor Meum

Ecce Cor Meum

Paul McCartney

EMI Classics

reviewed by Pedro Blas Gonzalez


Taking over eight years to complete, Ecce Cor Meum (Behold My Heart) is Paul McCartney’s fourth classical composition. The others are Liverpool Oratorio (1991), Standing Stone (1997) and Working Classical (1999).

This is a work that, according to McCartney, served him as a great learning experience. The piece totals just under one hour and was commissioned by Anthony Smith, president (1998-2005) of Magdalen College at Oxford. The piece was to coincide with the dedication of a new concert hall at Magdalen College.

McCartney admits that he was at first somewhat shocked to receive the invitation. Only later did it dawn on him that, “they wanted something different, otherwise they wouldn’t be asking me. And I thought: That’s good, it allows me some latitude, it means I don’t have to fit myself into any sort of box.”

He began to compose the work on a synthesizer. This offered him flexibility. But it also served as a source of frustration, as far as the vocal parts are concerned. While the synthesizer can reach certain high notes effortlessly, the same was not to be the case with the singers. Ecce Cor Meum is a work that is written for adult and children’s choir. He explains: “I was composing at a synthesizer, where you find yourself using what you like. It may be that on a synthesizer a solo violin is a terrible sound, so you avoid using it, whereas a real solo violin is a beautiful sound, but you can’t stand the scratchiness in the meanwhile. The oboe had a beautiful sound on the synthesizer, so I found myself using the oboe a lot more than I might have done otherwise.” These are wonderful revelations that are highly inspirational and informative to music fans and musicians alike.

What seems so impressive about this work, in addition to its beautiful, vital sentiment is the sincerity which informs it. In the liner notes written by Peter Quantrill, McCartney talks about the many obstacles and dead ends that he encountered in the process of composing.
The most devastating of these transcends music. McCartney’s wife, Linda, died of cancer in April 1998. It seems impossible to imagine that this work is not a direct consequence of McCartney’s emotional strain during this trying time. The final result is a complex, serious piece that serves as a testament to his ability to compose moving, beautiful music.

Ecce Cor Meum is divided into four movements and an interlude. “Spiritus,” “Gratia,” “Interlude,” “Musica” and “Ecco Cor Meum” each displaying a pathos of its own. The title of the work, McCartney tells us, comes from an inscription that he saw at the base of a crucifix statue in St. Ignatius Loyola church in New York.

The first movement, “Spiritus,” begins slowly, with sopranos and chorus. The words, “Spiritus, Spiritus, lead us to love/Spirit, show us the way” beckon the spirit of holiness for the necessary strength to love.

The coupling of children’s voices and the melodious strings of “Gratia,” the second movement, serves as an ode to wonderment where, “This guiding light will burn so bright/So much wonder surrounds us.” Words like angelic and free-flowing beauty have often been used to describe the impact of children’s voices on adult ears; as if recognition of purity manifested. Yet these monikers remain more truism than cliché, regardless of how often such phrases are made use of. The truth of this is verified in the joy offered by the listening experience.

The “Interlude” (Lament) acts as a meditative stopping point that allows us to reflect on the meaning and essence of the prior two movements. The melancholic oboe ebbs and flows like a person who sobs in solitude.

From this reflective sojourn the piece moves into its fourth movement, “Musica.” Appropriately, the words summon the order of all things divine to “Notice how gently we spin/Here on the skin of a sphere/Of a sphere/Now music to lull us to sleep/Now lull us to sleep/Music to wake us from a dream.”

The final movement, “Ecce Cor Meum,” may mean Behold my Heart, but McCartney interprets it as “Let me tell you what I think.” This movement begins with the words, “Behold my heart/There in the future we may be apart/Here in my music I show you my heart.” This may signal the further suggestion, “In the future, after I have departed.” In due time, this piece will undoubtedly come to round off McCartney’s musical legacy. A composition like this helps to connect two distinct musical poles, if not tastes.
The final movement seems more autobiographical than any of the previous ones. It acts as a link to the composers’ past, but also as an arrow that points to the future; as to how “I and my music may come to be regarded.” The movement offers several subtle clues: The staple McCartney harmony and his distinctive driving bass line. While Ecce Cor Meum may not be Paul McCartney’s final musical output, it is nonetheless his most challenging and ambitious.


Pedro Blas Gonzalez is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Barry University in Miami, Florida. Amongst his intellectual pursuits is his interest in the relationship that exists between subjectivity, self-autonomy and philosophy.