Shekhar Kapur would rather blog than speak. But we’ve caught him at the right time — he has just finished shooting and has a moment to breathe. And, of course, when the topic is his favourite Elizabeth I, once queen of England, it doesn’t take much to galvanise the otherwise soft-spoken director.

The Golden Age — the much-awaited second phase of the Oscar-winning Elizabeth — is nearing completion. Shooting has just got over, and the sound and background scores are now being worked on. A.R. Rahman has done the music for the film, along with Oscar-nomine Craig Armstrong. And Kapur is full of excitement.

“There are two aspects to the story — there is the individual, micro aspect of Elizabeth’s personal tribulations and there is the larger macro aspect of the political turmoil that England goes through,” he says.

Kapur, clearly, is passionate about the subject of queens, for let’s not forget he shot to international fame with a film called Bandit Queen. The new film, on Elizabeth I, is set against a period that saw a violent rift between the Catholics and the Protestants in England.

“At that time, the Spanish threat was looming large on England. Spanish King Philip II commanded the fabled Spanish Armada and was out to dominate England in the high seas. Elizabeth, a Protestant, attracted the ire of the devout Catholic Philip II — a situation further complicated by the fact that nearly 60 per cent of the English Parliament and the majority of her subjects was Catholic,” the filmmaker says.

Add to that a series of treacherous plots to dethrone her by members of the Royal family and you have a historical thriller. “If not for a freakish storm that damaged the Spanish Armada, Spain, and not England, would’ve been the colonial power ruling the world for the next 500 years,” Kapur says.

“Shekhar likes doing films that are biographical in nature,” explains executive producer and close associate Mohan Chopra. “Elizabeth is not the only character he has worked on. He has also made Bandit Queen, which was biographical. He is a very keen observer of human nature. Biographies may not be all that he’ll do, but at this point of his career this is what he wants to do,” Chopra says.

The Golden Age is slated to be released on October 12 in the UK and the United States. Produced by Universal Studios, the $57 million film was shot in places such as the Westminster Abbey in London and parts of Scotland.

There is some excitement in film circles about the music in The Golden Age. “Knowing Rahman, there will be more than a hint of Indian music in this film,” says Chopra, who is also the producer of Rahman’s recent solo album Pray for Me Brother. “The producers love his skills and his diversity. His coming together with Oscar nominee Craig Armstrong will be very much like fusion food,” he says.

Sound production for the last leg of the film is underway in the prestigious Soho Studios in London and Kapur is busy supervising that. Now that a major portion of the work is done, the crew is visibly relaxed. “It took Shekhar a very long time to prepare and start work on this film,” says Rajesh Rajilal, his assistant in London for the last five years. “After completing the screenplay, he had tapped producers in Canada and Australia. He wanted this to be a big budget film. It’s his dream project,” Rajilal says.

Understandably, for the period is rife with drama. If England was at a political crossroad, so too was Queen Elizabeth — and this turmoil serves as the common thread between Kapur’s two films on the subject. In The Golden Age, Elizabeth feels an unexpected vulnerability in her love for Walter Raleigh — a love denied to a Queen who had sworn everything to England. To keep Raleigh near her, she encourages Bess Throckmorten, her lady in court, to cultivate a relationship with him. This is the second phase of Elizabeth’s life that Shekhar captures in The Golden Age.

Keeping the thread of continuity alive are Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush, who play the same roles as in the first film — those of Queen Elizabeth and Sir Francis Walsingham, respectively. Joining them are Clive Owen, (Walter Raleigh), Samantha Morton (Mary Stuart), Abbie Cornish (Bess Throckmorten) and Jordi Molla (King Philip II of Spain).

“Golden Age is about immortality. It is what happens to people when they are in positions of absolute power. They then aspire to divinity and feel they are set apart from other mortals,” Kapur writes in his website.

Meanwhile, what’s clear is that his saga of Elizabeth does not end with The Golden Age. Kapur is planning out the third in what is going to be his Elizabeth trilogy. The theme will be mortality. “For that, I will wait a while — for Cate Blanchett to start looking 10 years older,” says Kapur.