Elizabeth's costumes : the power of spectacle, or spectacles of power?

When it was released in Australia, the film Elizabeth (Shekhar Kapur, 1998) provoked comment about its 'post-colonial' nature. Ruth Hessey, for example, in her Sydney Morning Herald piece, wrote of the 'exquisitely subversive approach' of the Indian director. She further noted that Australians edited the film (Jill Bilcock), composed the music (David Hirshfelder), and played two of the central characters: Elizabeth (Cate Blanchett) and Sir Frences Walsingham (Geoffrey Rush). The film, she concluded, is 'something of a post-colonial revenge on Britain's most hallowed myth'. Another reviewer writes: 'If nothing else, Elizabeth might well be remembered as the first post-colonial costume drama'.