Anonymous (film)

Anonymous
Theatrical release poster
Directed byRoland Emmerich
Written byJohn Orloff
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyAnna Foerster
Edited byPeter R. Adam
Music by
Production
companies
Distributed bySony Pictures Releasing
Release dates
  • September 11, 2011 (2011-09-11) (TIFF)
  • October 28, 2011 (2011-10-28) (United States)
  • November 10, 2011 (2011-11-10) (Germany)
Running time
130 minutes[1]
Countries
  • Germany
  • United States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$30 million[2]
Box office$15.4 million[2]

Anonymous is a 2011 period drama film directed by Roland Emmerich[3] and written by John Orloff. The film is a fictionalized version of the life of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, an Elizabethan courtier, playwright, poet and patron of the arts, and suggests he was the actual author of William Shakespeare's plays.[4] It stars Rhys Ifans as de Vere and Vanessa Redgrave as Queen Elizabeth I of England.

The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 11, 2011.[5] Produced by Centropolis Entertainment and Studio Babelsberg and distributed by Columbia Pictures, Anonymous was released on October 28, 2011 in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, expanding to theatres around the world in the following weeks. The film was a box office flop and received mixed reviews, with critics praising its performances and visual achievements, but criticising the film's time-jumping format, factual errors, and promotion of the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship.[6]

  1. ^ British Board of Film Classification 2011
  2. ^ a b "Anonymous (2011)". Box Office Mojo. Internet Movie Database. Retrieved November 13, 2011.
  3. ^ Secret Defence: Roland Emmerich's "Anonymous" on Notebook|MUBI
  4. ^ May 1980, p. 9
  5. ^ Evans, Ian (2011). "Anonymous premiere – 36th Toronto International Film Festival". DigitalHit.com. Retrieved January 7, 2012.
  6. ^ Robert Sawyer,'Biographical Aftershocks: Shakespeare and Marlowe in the Wake of 9/11', in Critical Survey, Berghahn publishers, Volume 25, Number 1 (Spring) 2013 pp. 19–32, p. 28: 'While the rivalry with Marlowe is not a central feature of the movie, wild conjecture is. As Douglas Lanier has recently posited, the movie displays a 'pile-up of factual errors', borrowing more from a long 'list of intercinematic' references rather than any reliance on 'fidelity to the verifiable historical record'.