The Other Boleyn Girl is a 2008 drama film directed by Justin Chadwick. The screenplay by Peter Morgan was adapted from the 2001 novel of the same name by Philippa Gregory. It is a romanticized account of the lives of 16th-century aristocrats Mary Boleyn, one-time mistress of King Henry VIII, and her sister, Queen Anne, who became the monarch's ill-fated second wife, though much history is distorted.

Production studio BBC Films also owns the rights to adapt the sequel novel, The Boleyn Inheritance, which tells the story of Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard and Jane Boleyn.^[1]

Plot[link]

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When Catherine of Aragon is blamed for England's failure to produce a male heir to the throne, Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk and his brother in law Thomas Boleyn plan to install Thomas's daughter Anne Boleyn in the court of Henry VIII of England. Howard and Boleyn hope Anne will become the King's mistress and mother of his son, furthering their own political ambitions, to the disgust of her mother, Lady Elizabeth Boleyn, Countess of Wiltshire and Ormond (the duke's sister). Anne eventually concurs to please her father and uncle. Anne's younger sister, Mary, marries William Carey, even though his family had asked for Anne's hand.

While visiting the Boleyn estate, Henry is injured in a hunting accident, indirectly caused by Anne, and is nursed by Mary. While in her care, Henry becomes smitten with her and he invites her to court. With great reluctance, Mary and William agree, knowing what will be expected of her. Mary and Anne become ladies-in-waiting to Queen Catherine and Henry sends William away on an assignment. Separated from her husband, Mary finds herself falling in love with Henry.

Rebellious Anne secretly marries the nobleman Henry Percy, who was engaged to Mary Talbot. Anne confides in her brother George, who is overjoyed and tells Mary. Fearing Anne will ruin her reputation by marrying without the king's consent, Mary alerts her father and uncle. They confront Anne, the marriage is annulled and she is exiled to France.

Despite the scandal, the family's fortunes seem secure when Mary becomes pregnant. They receive a number of new grants and estates, so their debts are paid and Henry arranges for George to marry. When Mary nearly suffers a miscarriage, she is confined to bed until her child is born. Norfolk recalls Anne to England to keep Henry's attention from wandering to another rival. In her belief that Mary exiled her to increase her own status, Anne plans her revenge. Anne successfully campaigns to win Henry over. By withholding her sexual favours, Anne drives Henry to vow to never again bed his wife or speak to her sister but she exacts this promise just after Mary gives birth to the much-anticipated son, Little Henry, making her victory hollow. Henry then has Mary sent to the country at Anne's request and shortly after her return, Mary is widowed.

Anne encourages Henry to break from the Roman Catholic Church when the Pope refuses to annul his marriage to Queen Catherine, despite Henry's insistence that her marriage to his older brother was consummated. Henry succumbs to Anne's demands, declares himself Supreme Head of the Church of England, and gets Thomas Wolsey to annul his marriage to Catherine.

Anne's schemes drive Henry to breaking point and in a fit of rage, he sexually assaults her. Hurt and confused by the attack, a pregnant Anne must go through with the unhappy marriage to please her family and become the new Queen of England. Mary and Anne are reconciled and Mary stays with her sister at court.

Despite the birth of a healthy daughter, Elizabeth, Henry angrily blames Anne for his failure to create a son. He begins courting Jane Seymour in secret, which doesn't help Anne's slowly crumbling psyche. After she suffers the miscarriage of a son, a hysterical Anne begs George to impregnate her since Henry will not lie with her. He accepts at first, determined to help his sister. Before they can go through with it, they reconsider. However, George's neglected wife Jane witnesses enough of their encounter to become suspicious. She reports what she has seen and both Anne and George are arrested. Despite the lack of evidence, the two are found guilty and sentenced to death for treason, adultery and incest. George is executed in front of a horrified Thomas. Distraught by news, Elizabeth Boleyn disowns her husband and brother, vowing never to forgive them for what their greed had done to her children.

Mary returns to court to plead for her siblings' lives. Believing that Henry will spare her sister, she leaves to see Anne right before the scheduled execution. The two sisters embrace and reconcile with one another and Anne asks Mary to take care of Elizabeth if anything should happen to her. Mary watches from the crowd as Anne makes her final speech, waiting for the execution to be cancelled as Henry promised. A letter from Henry is given to Mary, which reveals he has decided not to stop the execution and save Anne, and she is beheaded.

The closing captions reveal that Thomas Boleyn died two years after the executions, disgraced and alone. Elizabeth Boleyn died a year after her husband while The Duke of Norfolk was later imprisoned in the Tower. The next three generations of his family – son, grandson and great-grandson – were all executed for treason. True to her word, Elizabeth Boleyn never saw or spoke to her husband and brother again. Henry's break from the Roman Catholic Church changed the face of England forever. Meanwhile, Mary married William Stafford and lived happily with him and their children away from the royal court for the rest of her life. Henry should not have been concerned about leaving England with a strong heir because, in fact, he had one: “an heir who would rule England for forty-five years and transform it into one of the most powerful nations in Europe. However, it was not the son he desired, but the strong red-haired girl Anne gave him: Elizabeth”.

Cast[link]

• Natalie Portman as Anne Boleyn. Portman was attracted to the role because it was a character that she "hadn’t played before", and describes Anne as "strong yet she can be vulnerable and she’s ambitious and calculating and will step on people but also feels remorse for it." One month before filming began, Portman started taking daily classes to master the English accent under dialect coach Jill McCulloch, who also stayed on set throughout the filming.^[2]
• Scarlett Johansson as Mary Boleyn. Johansson expressed concern over the film being "such a melodramatic tale." In response to critics being skeptical about the film featuring American actresses as major British characters, Johansson said "The three foreign actors will be using English accents ... I'll take away the eyebrows and the make-up and you won't notice I'm American."^[3]
• Eric Bana as Henry VIII of England. Bana commented that he was surprised upon being offered the role, and describes the character of Henry as "a man who was somewhat juvenile, and driven by passion and greed", and that he interpreted the character as "this man who was involved in an incredibly intricate, complicated situation, largely through his own doing".^[4] In preparation for the role, Bana relied mostly on the script to come up with his own version of the character, and "deliberately stayed away" from other portrayals of Henry in films because he found it "too confusing and restricting".^[5]
• Jim Sturgess as George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford. Though the three siblings are all very tight-knit, George and Anne are closest. George supports and loves Anne for her rebellious and unconventional attitude. He is forced to marry Jane Parker, whom he despises for unknown reasons. George is often viewed as the most vulnerable and probably the kindest of the siblings.
• Kristin Scott Thomas as Elizabeth Boleyn, Countess of Wiltshire and Ormond
• Mark Rylance as Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire
• David Morrissey as Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk
• Benedict Cumberbatch as William Carey
• Oliver Coleman as Henry Percy, 6th Earl of Northumberland
• Ana Torrent as Catherine of Aragon
• Eddie Redmayne as William Stafford
• Juno Temple as Jane Parker
• Iain Mitchell as Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex
• Andrew Garfield as Francis Weston
• Corinne Galloway as Jane Seymour
• Bill Wallis as Archbishop Cranmer
• Constance Stride as young Mary Tudor
• Maisie Smith as young Elizabeth

Locations[link]

Much of the filming took place in Kent, England, though Hever Castle was not used, despite being the original household of Thomas Boleyn and family from 1505–1539. The Baron's Hall at Penshurst Place featured, as did Dover Castle, which stood in for the Tower of London in the film, and Knole House in Sevenoaks was used in several scenes.^[6] The home of the Boleyns was represented by Great Chalfield Manor in Wiltshire, and other scenes were filmed at locations in Derbyshire, including Cave Dale, Haddon Hall, Dovedale and North Lees Hall near Hathersage.^[7]

Release[link]

Theatrical[link]

The film was first released in theaters on February 29, 2008, though its world premiere was held at the 58th Berlin International Film Festival held on February 7–17, 2008.^[8][9] The film earned $9,442,224 in the United Kingdom,^[10] and $26,814,957 in the United States and Canada. The combined worldwide gross of the film was $75,598,644,^[10] more than double the film's $35 million budget.

Home media[link]

The film was released in Blu-ray and DVD formats on June 10, 2008. Extras on both editions include an audio commentary with director Justin Chadwick, deleted and extended scenes, character profiles, and featurettes. The Blu-ray version includes BD-Live capability and an additional picture-in-picture track with character descriptions, notes on the original story, and passages from the original book.

Critical reception[link]

The film received mixed reviews. Rotten Tomatoes reported that 41% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 133 reviews. One such review said the film was "dull" and needed editing.^[11] Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 51 out of 100, based on 32 reviews.^[12]

Manohla Dargis of the New York Times called the film "more slog than romp" and an "oddly plotted and frantically paced pastiche." She added, "The film is both underwritten and overedited. Many of the scenes seem to have been whittled down to the nub, which at times turns it into a succession of wordless gestures and poses. Given the generally risible dialogue, this isn’t a bad thing."^[13]

Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle said, "This in an enjoyable movie with an entertaining angle on a hard-to-resist period of history ... Portman's performance, which shows a range and depth unlike anything she's done before, is the No. 1 element that tips The Other Boleyn Girl in the direction of a recommendation ... [She] won't get the credit she deserves for this, simply because the movie isn't substantial enough to warrant proper attention."^[14]

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone stated, "The film moves in frustrating herks and jerks. What works is the combustible teaming of Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson, who give the Boleyn hotties a tough core of intelligence and wit, swinging the film's sixteenth-century protofeminist issues handily into this one."^[15]

Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian awarded the film three out of five stars, describing it as a "flashy, silly, undeniably entertaining Tudor romp" and adding, "It is absurd yet enjoyable, and playing fast and loose with English history is a refreshing alternative to slow and tight solemnity; the effect is genial, even mildly subversive ... It is ridiculous, but imagined with humour and gusto: a very diverting gallop through the heritage landscape."^[16]

Sukhdev Sandhu of The Telegraph said, "This is a film for people who prefer their costume dramas to gallop along at a merry old pace rather than get bogged down in historical detail ... Mining relatively familiar material here, and dramatising highly dubious scenarios, [Peter Morgan] is unable to make the set-pieces seem revelatory or tart ... In the end, The Other Boleyn Girl is more anodyne than it has any right to be. It can't decide whether to be serious or comic. It promises an erotic charge that it never carries off, inducing dismissive laughs from the audience for its soft-focus love scenes soundtracked by swooning violins. It is tasteful, but unappetising."^[17]

See also[link]

• The Other Boleyn Girl (2003 film)
• Anne Boleyn in popular culture

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: The Other Boleyn Girl (2008 film)

• Official website
• The Other Boleyn Girl at the Internet Movie Database
• The Other Boleyn Girl at the TCM Movie Database
• The Other Boleyn Girl at AllRovi
• The Other Boleyn Girl at Box Office Mojo