Mary Queen of Scots review: A disservice to Elizabeth I and Mary

Dir: Josie Rourke; Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Margot Robbie, Jack Lowden, Joe Alwyn, and David Tennant. Cert: 15, 124 mins

History has not been kind to Mary, Queen of Scots. Beyond her native land, she’s little more than a tragic footnote in Tudor history, ruined by disastrous marriages and the suspicion of her subjects. She fled into the arms of her cousin, Elizabeth I of England, only to find herself imprisoned and (eventually) on the chopping block. However, Mary Queen of Scots, a new film on her life, promises to reposition the reputations of Mary and Elizabeth, not as victim and destroyer, but as formidable equals, played, in turn, by two formidable actors, Saoirse Ronan and Margot Robbie.

Screenwriter Beau Willimon, the former showrunner of House of Cards, here takes the view of John Guy’s revisionist biography of Mary from 2004, which rejects the notion that the two queens were destined enemies, instead placing the onus on the men who surrounded them, manipulating both women into precarious positions for their own gain.

And, certainly, Mary’s life seemed to exist at the whim of others: she inherited the throne of Scotland at six days old, but was shipped off to France while others ruled in her stead. There, she was married to the Dauphin and became Queen of France at 16, before being widowed at 18. When she returned to Scotland to claim her throne, she discovered an unstable nation, cleft in two between Protestantism and Catholicism. A Catholic herself, now neighbour to a Protestant England, Mary found herself in a complex and precarious position.

However, in Willimon’s writing, and under the direction of Josie Rourke, who makes her directorial debut here, much of the deeper historical context surrounding Mary’s life is traded in for a kind of universal symbolism. She’s undeterred when her half-brother, the Earl of Moray (James McArdle), is reluctant to give up his regency to a woman, or by the misogynistic ravings of Protestant leader John Knox (David Tennant).

She seeks solidarity in Elizabeth, beseeching for them to rule side-by-side and “not through a treaty drafted by men lesser than ourselves”. She speaks frankly about her sexuality and proves herself an ally to her gender-nonconforming courtier (Ismael Cruz Córdova). In short, Mary is a 16th century feminist force.

Ronan, in this sense, is perfectly cast. She can possess a kind of unshowy ferocity when she needs to, employed here as it is in her Oscar-nominated performance in Lady Bird. In contrast, Robbie finds unexpected vulnerability in the “heart and stomach of a king” version of Elizabeth we’re so familiar with. Although their climactic meeting is fictionalised, it matters little, since the scene serves as an electric payoff for the rising tensions between both characters.

Yet, commanding as their performances may be, the requirement to present them as untainted feminist role models undermines how much we can learn from their own relationship with power, as they navigated a patriarchal landscape vastly different, but not entirely alien, to ours.

Perhaps the film’s approach stems partially from Rourke’s theatrical background, having served as the artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse since 2011. Since theatre’s foundations exist in the restaging of classics, it demands an eye for reinvention, with the past often dealt with by finding its parallels in the present – Hamlet, for instance, is more often seen now in jeans than in breeches. Yet, Rourke’s past experience results in both the film’s strongest and weakest aspects.

Many scenes are strikingly and beautifully staged, like tableaus, as Rourke contrasts the cavernous halls of Scotland’s Holyrood Palace with England’s suffocating finery. Furthermore, the film’s casting of Gemma Chan and Adrian Lester helps confront the backwards notion that people of colour had no part to play in this era of history, even if their stories still exist at the sidelines here.

However, although there is significance in viewing Mary and Elizabeth through the lens of today’s women in power, who are feared and undermined in equal measure, it inevitably does a disservice to its subjects – Mary and Elizabeth were real women, not historical superheroes.

Mary Queen of Scots will be released in UK cinemas on 18 January