Elizabeth is anti-Christian

Vatican historian says the film divides the West

LONDON: Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth: The Golden Age has been attacked by a Vatican-backed historian as a “distorted anti-papal travesty” that could divide the West.

Professor Franco Cardini, who holds the chair of medieval history at Florence University said that Kapur’s film formed part of a “concerted attack on Catholicism by atheists and apocalyptic Christians”.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age is the sequel to Kapur’s original film about Queen Elizabeth I in which Hollywood actress Cate Blanchett plays the title role. Blanchett has resumed the part in the sequel that picks up where the first left off after Elizabeth is finally crowned queen.

The Golden Age has received critical acclaim in both the Rome Film Festival last month and the current London Film Festival. Critic Wendy Ide called the sequel a “taut high drama” in which “every moment is condensed historical highlight”. She described Blanchett as “superb” in the role and said “each frame of Kapur’s film is a work of art in miniature”.

Blanchett who was nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of Elizabeth in the first part, is expected to be nominated again for The Golden Age. “A film which so profoundly and perversely falsifies history cannot be judged a good film,” said Cardini, who formerly taught at the Lateran University in Rome, a Vatican body.

Writing in Avvenire, the official organ of the Italian Bishops’ Conference Cardini said the film’s aim was to “secularise and de-Christianise” Europe. “Why put out this perverse anti-Catholic propaganda today, just at the moment when we are trying desperately to revive our Western identity in the face of the Islamic threat, presumed or real?” asks Cardini.

He suggests that the West should now be rediscovering its “common Christian roots” in the face of Islam and the film would help in dividing Christian Europe.