REVIEW: The Queen

Last week I saw The Queen, directed by Stephen Frears and starring Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II. The story is centered around the incredible week in 1997 between the day Diana, Princess of Wales was killed in a car accident while the Royal Family was on holiday in Scotland.

I was looking forward to seeing this movie for quite awhile because Stephen Frears is the director of my all-time favorite movie, Dangerous Liaisons, and Helen Mirren is one of my favorite actresses. Others have commented on the curious fact that Mirren has portrayed both Queen Elizabeth I and II in two important productions this year. In the HBO miniseries Elizabeth I (co-starring Oscar winner Jeremy Irons) Mirren is completely riveting for four hours in the best long-form television program of the year. (Elizabeth I won 9 Emmy awards, including Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie for Mirren and Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for Irons.) In The Queen, Mirren amazes again by completely disappearing into the role of the most famous woman in the world: the current Queen of England, Elizabeth Windsor. What one first notices is the stunning physical transformation of the 61-year-old Mirren into a nearly identical simulacrum of the then-71-year old Scottish grandmother who happens to also be sovereign to over 100 million people. One is also overwhelmed by the relentless verismilitude and sense of location provided by the brilliant art direction and production design of the film. "Surely, that is not the actual interior of Buckingham Palace we are looking at, is it?" The casting of Michael Sheen as Tony Blair is absolutely brilliant. He eerily resembles the actual Prime Minister and the actor exudes just the right amount of opportunism and officiousness.

But the center of the film is The Queen as played by Helen Mirren, along with the depictions of the trappings of royalty. What is interesting is how simultaneously unusual and familiar her life seems to us. She lives with her aged mother, prickly husband and impatient son in a huge sprawling castle on a Scottish estate the size of Rhode Island. The family dynamics are familiar, or at least probable. However the lifestyle is almost unbelievable plush and pampered. Meetings with the head of the government are shown as slightly irritating ammoyances which disturb the day's leisurely flow.

The story takes place during the week following Princess Diana's death and the film employs actual television footage combined with re-enacted scenes for the movie to great emotional effect. Per force, the audience compares their reaction to Diana's death with the Royal Family's reaction and the film poses the question of how would YOU have reacted if YOU were in The Queen's position? The film follows Tony Blair's attempts to "save the Royals from themselves" as the Queen's instinctive reaction is to treat the death of her son's ex-wife (and the mother of the future King of England) as a private family matter. The recently elected politician's reaction (and his young modern staff) is to get to a microphone and make a statement to assuage and mediate the public's sentiment. As the outpouring of grief turns into a tsunami which threatens to sweep away the monarchy itself, the modernizing Prime Minister goes out of his way to help the out-of-her-depth Queen negotiate the rapid media maelstrom and right the ship of state.

GRADE: A.