In addition to being curious and eating the royal family's melons, there is also a sense of voyeuristic pleasure.
Based on this, it is not difficult to understand the popularity of the British drama "Mary and George" . This royal scandal from hundreds of years ago has surfaced, making viewers lament that it is a drama intertwined with love and ambition.
A father obsessed with power sends his beautiful daughter into the palace, treating her as his political capital - this is a very common plot pattern in Chinese harem dramas.
However, we don’t see much of sexual transformation - a mother who pursues fame and fortune sends her beautiful son to the king’s bed. After the son becomes powerful, the whole family follows the chicken and dog to ascend to heaven. This is the plot of the British drama "Mary and George" Summary.
01
This scheming mother is called Mary (Julianne Moore). When the story begins, her squire husband has just passed away, and her three sons and a daughter are all waiting to be fed. She thought her husband's assets were barely enough for them to live on, but she found out that he had already transferred the money to her brother before his death.
Mary must find another wealthy marriage partner for herself, and cross the class again like her first marriage. Before, she was just a maid from a humble background, and the only thing she could rely on was her beauty and brains.
After the death of her first husband, she quickly secured her second husband, used a little charm to win over the wealthy old knight, and successfully reached the fringes of upper class society with her children.
Among the four children, Mary's favorite is the delicate and weak George (Nicholas Galizina). She firmly believes that his appearance can change the fate of the whole family, so she resolutely cuts off his relationship with the little maid at home. He was sent to France for training at a huge expense, and he learned the hobbies of high-ranking officials such as fencing and equestrian, as well as the secrets of bed curtains.
While George was training, Mary accidentally got the opportunity to receive the king. Through observation and bribery, she discovered the New World - the king actually liked men, and the popular man beside him, Somerset, became powerful because of it. The ambitious Mary decided to send George to the king's pillow to compete for his favor.
The subsequent plot is very familiar to the audience. Almost every method of fighting for favor in "Mary and George" can be found in the harem drama "The Legend of Zhen Huan": George won the king's favor for the first time with an ingenious dance, which was as beautiful as Zhen Huan's Jinghong Dance; Somerset relied on the king's favor to do evil, and he was like a willful and arrogant concubine; George pretended to be a masked musician at the banquet after losing power, which was exactly the same as An Lingrong's way of returning to favor...
I believe you can see it Here, I can't help but sigh "The world is really a huge "The Legend of Zhen Huan"" .
George gained power in the palace, and Mary showed off outside the palace. She arranged for several other children to marry into noble families, thereby consolidating the family's power. In her early years, she advised her son, "If I were a man and I had your looks, I would rule the damn world." After careful planning, she finally achieved her wish. While sitting on her wealth and power, she also secretly manipulated George to influence the political situation.
"Mary and George" vividly shows the family history of Mary and George. Even after the death of the old king, they once became the powerful ministers that the new king relied on. But the last episode ended unexpectedly after George was assassinated by an ordinary soldier. It was like a beautifully crocheted sweater that was about to be finished but the needle suddenly broke.
However, the crochet man was still there. After Mary heard the news of her son's death, she looked down at the huge family that had spread out and showed an incomprehensible complex expression.
02
The story of "Mary and George" is strange and catchy, but it is adapted from real people in British history .
As shown in the play, Marie Villiers, the archetype of her mother, achieved basic necessities in the first half of her life through two marriages. When she reached middle age, the days of her beauty came to an end, and she set her sights on the next generation. .
The prototype of his son, George Villiers, initially entered the palace as cupbearer, serving King James I drinks. Soon he was named a personal attendant who could take care of the king's daily life.
After that, it only took eight years for him to rise from horse master, baron, viscount, earl, to Duke of Buckingham. The Duke of Buckingham was also written into the novel "The Three Musketeers" by the writer Alexandre Dumas.
As the only duke who is not a member of the royal family, George has been criticized. At this time, his mother Mary, who was good at dancing, entered the palace and became a close "friend" of the king, even influencing his treatment methods in the later stages of his life.
Mary devoted all her efforts to the family, and first arranged a marriage for her eldest son John, who was suspected to be mentally retarded, to Frances, an aristocratic woman. Francis was a victim of marriage from beginning to end. After marriage, she cheated on her and gave birth to her lover's son.
Mary could not bear the thought of her unrelated grandson becoming the heir to the wealth, and began to promote George's marriage to Catherine, the richest woman in England.
King James I’s sexual orientation is not a fabrication of the show, but has been stamped by historians.
He gave birth to eight children with Princess Anne of Denmark, including the heir Charlie, and the series also paid a lot of attention to this little prince. At the same time, he had three important male favorites: his first love Esme Stewart whom he met when he was 13 years old (he was 37 years old at the time), his lover Somerset who was once in power in the palace, and his lover George who stayed with him until his death.
In the play, when the king was old, he did not forget to travel a long way to retrieve Esme's embalmed heart. This thing is quite bizarre, but it is real. The king believed that this exotic lover was "upright and gentle" and worthy of his lifelong memory.
When talking about George, the king also used sweet words, saying that he "loves the Duke of Buckingham more than anyone else", and even made a shocking declaration of love, "Christ has John, and I have George."
It is a pity that George's love is not As pure as the king thought, he was deeply bound to Prince Charles and monopolized power during the later period of the king's reign. After Charles ascended the throne, George remained active, and both men were savaged by Parliament when dealing with France and Spain.
George died in an assassination planned by fanatics. His mother Mary was not struck down by the cruel facts, but acted quite indifferently. She lived four years longer than George. The words "most powerful" and "pure blood" on her tombstone almost make people forget her starting point as a maid.
03
Looking back at history, you will find that "Mary and George" reproduces 80% of historical facts.
But is it a good historical drama? The answer is no.
We can classify it as a bubble historical drama, based on historical facts, but full of colorful bubbles that put entertainment first.
As can be seen from the title of the film, Mary is the core role of the play. This is the solo show of actress Julianne Moore. She also perfectly interprets Mary's wisdom, smoothness and ruthlessness with her superb acting skills.
She keeps saying that she loves George the most, but in fact she doesn’t love anyone except herself. Her husband or children are all her tools. Love more if it has value, love less if it doesn't.
"Mary and George" echoes the trend of leading female protagonists, focusing on the former. As a result, George is constantly weakened in the play, and is reduced to a beautiful but stupid mama's boy . But in real history, George was by no means a meat-selling idiot. Especially in the later stages of gaining power, he was almost separated from his mother. He was not someone willing to be a puppet at all.
But the series does not intend to explore heavy elements such as the symbiotic relationship and power struggle between mother and son, and the complex emotions of James I. Instead, it makes it light and settles on the staggering strange relationship. You can simply understand it as perverted wolf mother, online chicken baby .
Nicholas Galizina, who plays George, is also an interesting choice. His previous more famous role was the British prince in "Stars and Stripes and Royal Blue". Playing a homosexual again is a reinforcement and reuse of a classic character by the "Mary and George" crew, and they make full use of his vase attribute , allowing him to show his strong body to the camera many times.This also proves that the crew's portrayal of George was meticulous.
"Mary and George" does not need too many nudity scenes, but it arranged many sex scenes with George. In the era of eyeball economy, these easy-to-disseminate bridges can grab the audience's attention immediately, but if you look deeper, you will find that it is just that takes off for the sake of taking off, and that is exposed for the sake of revealing.
Even Mary was arranged to have an unethical affair with the fireworks woman, and the two women also contributed to the large-scale sex scene. Whether it is the creation of Mary's character or the respect for real history, this setting is unnecessary and only serves to increase the selling point of the series.
"Mary and George" is a lively romance drama, but it doesn't stop there.
It is good-looking, and it is also flippant . It conforms to the drama-chasing psychology of this era, but it cannot be ranked among the classic historical dramas.
Amy
editor-in-chief Chen Lingling
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-