What "Elizabeth" Teaches About Hillary Clinton's Challenge

What "Elizabeth" Teaches About Hillary Clinton's Challenge

Queens are meant to be looked at, not touched. Early in the new film "Elizabeth: The Golden Age," England's Elizabeth I, played by Cate Blanchett, is bored by a bad date. Watching, at close range, is a flock of curious courtiers; her suitor, a stuttering continental royal, is clearly terrified by the mob. Ever gracious, the queen offers some advice. Her secret for life in the public eye, she tells her companion, is to pretend she lives behind "a pane of glass." It keeps her safe, cuts her off from the courtly crowd. "They can't touch me," she says. "You should try it."

"Elizabeth" is worth watching in the midst of this election season even if it offers us little escape. The Virgin Queen's world, after all, is in many ways our own. A nation is in peril. Bitterly divided at home, it vacillates between two warring dynasties. Threatened by dark forces abroad, it worries that a decisive moment is coming when one great empire will rise and another will fall. And a female leader is struggling to maintain her femininity while proving she can rule as well as any man. Watching it, I couldn't help thinking of Hillary Clinton, quite possibly the next president of the United States, a woman who often seems to live behind her own plate of glass.

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot