The Other Boleyn Girl, a film focusing on the lives and intrigue of those in the Tudor court, hit movie theaters in the United States this week. Based upon the novel of the same name by Phillippa Gregory, the film stars Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson as the two sisters fighting for the love of one King Henry VIII, played here by Australian actor Eric Bana. The movie is directed by Justin Chadwick and Gregory's novel is adapted for the screen by Peter Morgan. The story here is a fictional account of the historical events surrounding Henry and his affairs with the two Boleyn girls, Mary and Anne.
The book itself comes in at just about seven hundred pages. It details each and every event in that time period from the perspective of Mary Boleyn. During those seven hundred pages, we are taken step by step through how the monarch finds himself in between two sisters. We see his courtship of Mary, and then not long afterward, we see him put her aside at the request of her own sister, Anne. We also see him put aside his own wife and change the landscape of England forever by separating it from the Pope and Rome to marry Anne in order to have a male heir to the throne. The book is one that is hard to put down. I found myself engrossed, turning page after page.
The movie, coming in at just under two hours, makes selective use of the book for its screenplay as it would be hard to cover the whole history of the time period in such a brief time. The televised account of this time period seen on the cable network Showtime last year came in at just under ten hours, and it still has more to tell given that a second season is soon to premiere. What we have in the movie is an abbreviated telling of the main points of the story. Mary Boleyn, played here by Scarlett Johansson, meets and falls in love with the King, and we see her tossed aside when her sister Anne, played by Natalie Portman, enchants him while Mary is lying in wait to give birth to his child, a son that he desperately wants. However, the birth is no matter because as she is in labor, Anne is cementing her own place in the King's heart. In the time that follows, we see Anne climb to power, and then fall just as quickly.
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