Film Review The Queen
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Film Review: The Queen 

Saturday, February 10, 2007 - I remember getting up early one morning when I was in high school to watch "the" wedding. "The" wedding would be that of Lady Diana and Prince Charles. As young as she was at the time, I think maybe we grew up together. When she faltered, so did I, and when she struggled to be free, so did I, although in entirely different ways.

Princess Diana was really my only interest in the Royal family, and I, along with many others, always felt she got the shaft. So when I first heard about The Queen, it didn't hold much interest with me, yet when I learned the movie was centered around the week of Diana's death, and what happened behind the gates of the palace, I knew I had to see it.

After first showing the election of 1997, where Tony Blair, played by Michael Sheen, won in a landslide for the position of Prime Minster, we get our first glimpses of the Queen, played brilliantly by Helen Mirren. She holds no respect for Blair, or his wife, attacking the way Mrs. Blair (Helen McCrory) curtsies to her, and chastising Blair for his lack of proper protocol.

Just a few months later, while all are away on their summer vacations, the shocking news comes in the middle of the night that Diana has been killed in a car crash. The Queen, Prince Philip (James Cromwell), the Queen Mother (Sylvia Syms), Prince Charles (Alex Jennings), and Prince William and Prince Harry, are staying at the Balmoral estate. They gather together watching the shocking news, but are more disturbed about the interruption in their lives, and what it could do to the monarchy, than the actual death itself.

Surprisingly, Prince Charles is seen to be the more human of the Royals, although that's not what we see in the press. Yet, the goal of the movie is exactly that, to allow us to see that what we see in the press is actually a well-orchestrated attack by a team of press secretaries and advisors. While the Queen's stance is that Diana wasn't even part of the Royal family anymore, as the divorce had been finalized a year earlier, Charles reminds his mother that Diana was also the mother of her grandchildren.

The monarchy's cold stance on Diana's death is ridiculed in the press, and Blair works tirelessly to get the Queen to agree to holding a public funeral, make a statement to her people, and lower a flag to half mass. While both he and I began with the view that the Queen was a stuffy, cold-hearted, narcissistic woman, by the end we both saw her differently. Her life is her job, and it's a job she's done for fifty years. She know no other life, and being disliked by so many was very hurtful to her.

This is where I have to sing Helen Mirren's praises. Just as when I watched Joaquin Phoenix in Walk the Line last year, and didn't see a man playing Johnny Cash, but Cash himself, I never thought I was watching a woman playing the Queen. Mirren "was" the Queen. Likewise with Michael Sheen's portrayal of Tony Blair. It was very well-acted. The performance I didn't enjoy was that of Alex Jennings as Prince Charles. He seemed more concerned with trying to contort his face to look like Charles, than actually "being" Charles.

Yuddy Score: A Yud

-LT





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