Lady Jane (1986)

User Rating:

7.1/10   

Director:

Trevor Nunn

Writers:

Chris Bryant (story) and
David Edgar (writer)

Release Date:

7 February 1986 (USA)

Genre:

Biography | Drama | History | Romance

Tagline:

Some of the greatest battles are fought with the heart.

Plot:

The death of King Henry VIII throws his kingdom into chaos because of succession disputes. His weak son Edward...

Plot Keywords:

Reformation | Lady Jane Grey | England | Snow | Drinking

Cast

Helena Bonham Carter	...	Lady Jane Grey
Cary Elwes	...	Guilford Dudley
John Wood	...	John Dudley, Duke of Nothumberland
Michael Hordern	...	Doctor Feckenham
Jill Bennett	...	Mrs. Ellen
Jane Lapotaire	...	Princess Mary
Sara Kestelman	...	Frances Grey, Duchess of Suffolk
Patrick Stewart	...	Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk
Warren Saire	...	King Edward VI
Joss Ackland	...	Sir John Bridges
Ian Hogg	...	Sir John Gates
Lee Montague	...	Renard, the Spanish Ambassador
Richard Vernon	...	The Marquess of Winchester
David Waller	...	Archbishop Cranmer
Richard Johnson	...	The Earl of Arundel

Runtime:

142 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Iceland:12 | West Germany:12 | Australia:PG | Finland:K-16 | Singapore:NC-16 | Sweden:11 | UK:PG | USA:PG-13

Filming Locations:

Broughton Castle, Banbury, Oxfordshire, England, UK

Company:

Capital Equipment Leasing

Trivia:

In reality, Lady Jane and Guilford Dudley barely knew each other and were not together during their imprisonment.

Goofs:

Factual errors: Although the movie clearly has rewritten history to make a romance, in reality Jane and Guilford never lived in their own home, nor did they ever live as man and wife in the short time they were together; within a month of the marriage Jane was crowned Queen (and refused to crown Guilford King), and 9 days later they were both in prison, lodged in separate towers, and never had contact again.

Quotes:

Guilford: God's teeth!

Movie Connections:

Referenced in As You Wish: The Story of 'The Princess Bride' (2001) (V)

God is in the details

It's difficult to know how to take a film that begins with a history lesson (to the self-important sound of a beating drum, no less) and ends with a quote from Plato. Between the two is a narrative that wants to be both a conventional love story and an unconventional period film. It doesn't quite succeed at either, but for viewers of LADY JANE, the pleasure is in the details, and there are plenty of those.

To first dispense with the glaring historical inaccuracy that lies at the film's center, Lady Jane Grey, the Nine-Day Queen of England in 1553, did not in truth have a passionate love match in her husband, Guilford Dudley. Theirs was an arranged marriage, highly political in nature and masterminded by Dudley's ambitious father, the Duke of Northumberland. In reality, Jane resented and distrusted her husband, who was a spoiled and rather empty-headed young man with none of the high intellectual achievement so prominent in Jane.

For the second dispensation, Helena Bonham Carter, who plays Jane, is still unskilled at acting in this, her first role. She can furrow her brow with admirable dexterity to denote every emotion from confusion to embarrassment to sexual fulfillment, but there's little evidence of much going on behind, in the furrows of an actor's brain. However, since those afore-mentioned details surround her, it becomes fairly easy for a more demanding audience to overlook her callowness.

Now for the details, beginning with everyone else in the cast. Has John Wood ever utilised his supercilious half-smile to better advantage? As Northumberland, he's perfect - driven by the need to consolidate his power when Jane's cousin Edward VI falls into a fatal illness, he conceives a scheme that will require relentless control over nearly everyone at court. While his fellow ministers, all burly toughs, inevitably knuckle under to his combination of silken flattery and outright threats, he's thwarted by two seemingly weak women - Jane and Mary Tudor (played with real grit and bitterness by Jane Lapotaire). It's a tossup whether Wood is better at the threats or at two points of emotional breakdown - one, when he must cast the die and order the agonising prolongation of Edward's death to complete his plans, or when, mud-pelted and dishevelled following his defeat by Mary's army, he ends up in the Tower, where all he can offer to his sons and followers is a weary, `I'm sorry.' It's the rare film where Wood's comic instincts don't get the better of his serious performance - this is one of them.

As Jane's equally controlling parents, Patrick Stewart and Sara Kestelman are almost as good. Stewart's character, the Duke of Suffolk, isn't a bright man, but his pursuit of his ambitions never quite overrides his notion of family honor, and this keeps him sympathetic, as all the supposed villains of the film remain. That's another of the details that deserves cherishing - the refusal to go for simplistic characters. Stewart is especially good when he throws all caution to the wind and raises an army to rescue his daughter, overriding even the objections of his formidable wife.

Other details are in the costuming, the suitably squalid tavern and brothel scenes, the bit where the aristocratic Kestelman chows down on her dinner, gnawing on a greasy chop and wiping her mouth with her sleeve, and the achingly beautiful winter deer hunt that runs under the opening credits. All this and more make up for a downbeat ending and a central failure to come up with a satisfying examination of that most enigmatic of queens, Lady Jane Grey.