A
film review by Roger Ebert, on October 12, 2006.
The
opening shots of Stephen Frears' The Queen simply show Helen Mirren's face as her character
prepares for it to be seen. She is Queen Elizabeth II, and we know that at
once. The resemblance is not merely physical, but embodies the very nature of
the Elizabeth we have grown up with -- a private woman who takes her public
role with great gravity.
Elizabeth
is preparing to meet Tony Blair (Michael
Sheen), the new Labor prime minister who has just been elected in a
landslide. We see Blair preparing for the same meeting. His election was a
fundamental upheaval of British political life after Thatcherism, and at that
time, Britain stood on a threshold of uncertain but possibly tumultuous change.
Within
months, the queen and Blair find themselves in a crisis that involves not
politics but a personal tragedy that was completely unforeseen -- the death of
Diana, princess of Wales, in a Paris car crash. The Queen tells the story of how her death with her boyfriend, the
playboy department store heir Dodi Fayed, would threaten to shake the very
monarchy itself.
Told
in quiet scenes of proper behavior and guarded speech, The Queen is a spellbinding story of opposed passions -- of
Elizabeth's icy resolve to keep the royal family separate and aloof from the
death of the divorced Diana, who was legally no longer a royal, and of Blair's
correct reading of the public mood, which demanded some sort of public
expression of sympathy from the crown for The
People's Princess.
It
was extraordinary, the grief that people felt after her death. I was reminded
of the weeks after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Was it out of
proportion to Diana's objective importance? She was a young woman almost
cynically picked for her marriage, who provided the crown with its required
heirs, who was a photogenic escort for Prince Charles, who found no love from
her husband; it was no secret they both had affairs during their marriage. Once
divorced, she made peculiar dating choices.
She
died in a late-night crash while being pursued by paparazzi. Yet it was as if a
saint had been taken from our midst. Yes, Diana devoted much time to doing
good. Yes, I believe she was sincere. But doing good was part of her job
description; she signed on for it. In death, she had the same impact as if a
great national hero had died.
The Queen is told almost
entirely in small scenes of personal conflict. It creates an uncanny sense that
it knows what goes on backstage in the monarchy; in the movie, Queen Elizabeth,
Prince Philip and the Queen Mother have settled into a sterile domesticity
cocooned by servants and civil servants. It shows Tony and Cherie Blair (Helen McCrory) in their own bourgeois
domestic environment. Both households, privately, are plain-spoken to the point
of bluntness, and Cherie is more left wing than her husband, less instinctively
awed by the monarchy, more inclined to dump the institution.
What
Tony clearly sees is that the monarchy could be gravely harmed, if not toppled,
by the Queen's insistence on sticking to protocol and not issuing a statement
about Diana. The press demands that Elizabeth fly the flag at half-mast as a
symbolic gesture at Buckingham Palace. Elizabeth stands firm. The palace will
not acknowledge the death or sponsor the funeral.
The Queen comes down to the
story of two strong women loyal to the doctrines of their beliefs about the
monarchy, and a man who is much more pragmatic. The queen is correct,
technically, in not lowering the flag to half-mast -- it is not a national
flag, but her own, flown only when she is in residence. But Blair is correct
that the flag has become a lightning rod for public opinion. The queen is
correct, indeed, by tradition and history in all she says about the affair --
but she is sadly aloof from the national mood. Well, maybe queens should be.
Certainly
that's what the Queen Mum thinks. Played by Sylvia Syms, she is shown at 90-plus years, still tart and
sharp-witted. At the last minute, the palace needs a protocol plan for the
funeral, and time is so short that the Queen Mum's own funeral plan has to be
borrowed and modified. Syms has a priceless reaction where she learns that her
honor guard, all servicemen, will be replaced by celebrities -- even, gasp,
Elton John.
The Queen could have been told
as a scandal sheet story of celebrity gossip. Instead, it becomes the hypnotic
tale of two views of the same event -- a classic demonstration, in high drama,
of how the Establishment has been undermined by publicity. I think it possible
that Thatcher, if she still had been in office, might have supported the Queen.
That would be impossible to the populist Blair.
Stephen
Frears, the director, has made several wonderful films about conflicts and harmonies
in the British class system (My Beautiful
Laundrette, Dirty Pretty Things, Prick Up Your Ears), and The Queen, of course, represents the
ultimate contrast. No one is more upper class than the queen, and Tony Blair is
profoundly middle class.
The
screenplay is intense, focused, literate, and observant. The dynamic between
Elizabeth and Philip (James Cromwell),
for example, is almost entirely defined by decades of what has not been said
between them -- and what need not be said. There are extraordinary, tantalizing
glimpses of the real Elizabeth
driving her own Range Rover, leading her dogs, trekking her lands at Balmoral
-- the kind of woman, indeed, who seems more like Camilla Parker-Bowles than
Diana.
Mirren
is the key to it all in a performance sure to be nominated for an Oscar. She
finds a way, even in a behind the scenes
docudrama, to suggest that part of her character will always be behind the
scenes. What a masterful performance, built on suggestion, implication and
understatement. Her queen in the end authorizes the inevitable state funeral,
but it is a tribute to Mirren that we have lingering doubts about whether,
objectively, it was the right thing. Technically, the queen was right to
consider the divorced Diana no longer deserving (by her own choice) of a royal
funeral. But in terms of modern celebrity worship, Elizabeth was wrong. This
may or may not represent progress. [Ebert’s rating: **** out of 4 stars]
Labels:
biography, drama
