Helen Mirren stakes her claim for this year's Best Actress Oscar with a marvelous performance as Queen Elizabeth II.
The film begins in the spring of 1997, with the election of Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) as the new Prime Minister. He goes to the palace for his first official meeting with the Queen, for whom this sort of thing is old hat. "After all," she reminds him, "you are my tenth Prime Minister; my first was Winston Churchill."
Leap forward to August, and the death of Princess Diana, an event to which Elizabeth and the royal family respond as protocol demands, which means that they remain in seclusion at the country estate in Balmoral and defer to Diana's family, who want a private funeral.
Meanwhile, the public is responding with an unprecedented outpouring of grief, and Blair is put in the awkward position of trying to convince Elizabeth that the royal family needs to make some sort of statement or public appearance, that the public wants their grief to be visible.
Mirren's Elizabeth simply doesn't comprehend the extent to which celebrity culture has taken over the world; she expects the public response to Diana's death to be proportionate to her official status as an ex-princess, and the depth of public grief perplexes her completely. She is incapable of grasping that Diana has become transcended royalty to achieve iconic status; in death, Diana has become Rebecca, leaving the queen to play the second Mrs. de Winter.
This may all sound rather somber, but The Queen provides a lot more fun than you'd expect. Michael Sheen plays Tony Blair in a manner reminiscent of Dudley Moore, constantly exasperated by the idiocy of the people around him. James Cromwell is an unexpected choice to play Prince Philip, who seems to be the most clueless member of the family, convinced that all William and Harry need is to go out and do some deer hunting. Alex Jennings nicely conveys the complex emotions of Prince Charles, balancing his obvious frustration and anger towards Diana with his concern for the wellbeing of their sons.
But Helen Mirren dominates the movie, with a beautifully understated performance. Her Elizabeth is a very smart woman, with a dry sense of humor, and a very precise sense of what her role in society is supposed to be. Watching her come to terms with the ways in which that role has changed provides one of the finest afternoons you'll have at the movies this year.
3 comments:
great review .. I've loved Dame Helen ever since I first saw her on Prime Suspect, so I'm glad to hear she's so good here .. when she does her name called on Oscar night, it will be long overdue
"(The Queen) is incapable of grasping that Diana has become transcended royalty to achieve iconic ststus..."
True that Diana was and remains the poster girl of superficial, popular culture, but it was a very different Diana the Royals knew personally.
Both Diana and her brother, Charles Spencer, suffered from Borderline Personality Disorder caused by their mother's abandoning them as young children. A google search reveals that Diana is considered a case study in BPD by mental health professionals.
For Charles Spencer, BPD meant insatiable sexual promiscuity (his wife was divorcing him at the time of Diana's death).
For Diana, BPD meant intense insecurity and insatiable need for attention and affection which even the best husband could never fulfill.
From a BPD perspective, it's clear that the Royal family did not cause her "problems". Rather, she brought her multiple issues into the marriage, and the Royal family was hapless to deal with them.
Her illness, untreated, sowed the seeds of her fast and unstable lifestyle, and sadly, her tragic fate.
"A google search reveals" doesn't mean much these days; with all the nuts and crackpots on the web these days, you can find "evidence" to back up any theory you like. Unless you're a trained mental health professional -- further, unless you were Diana's trained mental health professional -- speculation about what condition or disorder she may or may not have had is both reckless and unkind.
And I don't really think that the movie depends on any sort of appreciation of who Diana was in her private life; Elizabeth's problem is that Diana's public image has moved her from the realm of tasteful restraint into the realm of celebrity, and that's a world Elizabeth simply isn't prepared to deal with.
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