Anonymous

Intrigue is afoot in "Anonymous." Rhys Ifans as Edward de Vere.

After a cinematic diet consisting of The New York Film Festival, “DOC NYC” and Film Forum screenings, I decided to return to mainstream “multiplex” fare this past Saturday, via the AMC Loews Kips Bay Theatre, at 570 Second Avenue.  After all, the last “multiplex” movie I saw was “Straw Dogs.”  No wonder I had stayed away for so long.

It is perhaps ironic that the film I should choose for my “multiplex” return, after having seen so much art house fare, was actually an art house movie masquerading as a “multiplex” movie.  “Anonymous” is an intelligent, sumptuous, period piece set in Elizabethan England.  The story is a kaleidoscopic melding of history and very creative conjecture, which, among other things, says that William Shakespeare was an illiterate actor who was a front for Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford (played by Rhys Ifans).  There is actually a term for this theory:  Oxfordianism.