There is a lot wrong with this movie and I don't want to waste too much time critiquing it, but there are some standout problems worth a quick mention.

A total lack of subtlety. Mary and Elizabeth meet and carry out their conversation while negotiating veils that are for reasons that make no sense, strung up all around a barn. Yeah, we get the symbolism. One would need to be an idiot not to. What a clunker. The movie is full of this shit.

A colour palette that is entirely muted shades of mostly grey and brown, except for several key scenes where red bursts into the scene. Clunk.

The dialogue. Ok, I get that listening to the sorts of English used in 16th Century Britain would be difficult. But there is no reason for the ridiculously florid dialogue. Plain English would have done just fine. Convoluted prose does not make the dialogue richer: it makes the production pompous and pretentious. And why oh why did Guy Pierce think doing an impersonation of David Attenborough's voice made for a more compelling William Cecil?

The multi racial casting. I'll say no more.

The largely incoherent story. It's true that Scottish politics of the day was unbelievably complicated with more twists and turns than most people can comprehend. This movie does nothing at all to make things clear, and isn't helped by the historical inaccuracies either. If a writer wants to tell a story spanning a quarter of a century, and to do so in 2 hours, it might be best to focus only on a particular thread of that story.