Reznet

A Cut-Throat Beheading Movie

By Nancy Kelsey

She's classy, honest. The girl next door type.

But in "The Other Boleyn Girl," Natalie Portman foregoes all of that to depict the rise of one of the most famous and conniving of English queens, Anne Boleyn.

Also starring Scarlet Johansson and Eric Bana, this movie brings life to the story of an ultimate beheading we are all likely familiar with from history books in a vivid and memorable way.

Born in the deep country, the Boleyn siblings — including a handsome brother — are subject to their father's hopes for wealthy marriages to raise the family status.

Many years later, the two girls find themselves competing for the affections of King Henry VIII, whose Spanish wife Katherine of Aragon has not borne a male heir.

Soon Mary Boleyn, Johannson's character, wins his lustful eye and becomes pregnant. She bears a son, and the sister she has always loved ruthlessly betrays her while she is bedridden. Then she is cast into exile at her sister's urging.

Portman was balanced in being regal and cut-throat when she needed to be to win the king over, get him to divorce his wife and break England away from the Catholic Church. She sure made me despise her. And it ends just as your school teachers told you — with the decapitation of Anne Bolelyn.

The performances in this flick are highly believable and moving. I particularly enjoyed the parallel cinematography at the end and beginning showing how Anne's daughter would become the greatest queen to rule England despite her gender. That queen was Elizabeth I.

I found this movie entertaining and intriguing. No gripes here. It is worthy of four frybreads, reznet's highest rating.

Nancy Kelsey, Little River Band of Ottawa Indians, is studying journalism at the University of Nebraska graduate school in Lincoln. She is a graduate of the Freedom Forum's American Indian Journalism Institute. She interned as a reporter at The Seattle Times last summer. Next summer she'll report for The Associated Press in Boston.