The Queen (UK, 2006)
dir. Stephen Frears
rating: ✶✶✶
Clever writing and skilful montage of news clips create an unlikely, yet reasonably successful film about the tense week in September, 1997 when the body of Diana, Princess of Wales was returned to England for burial. Diana's celebrity pop status won out in the end over protocol, and a reluctant Queen accorded the honour of state funeral to the divorced and disruptive mother of the princes. The look at what was going on behind the scenes at Balmoral and Downing Street is plausible fiction, and an excuse to consider the role of symbolic monarchy and tradition in the modern democratic state, not unsympathetically. Helen Mirren in the leading role is quite brilliant, credible, restrained and ultimately human (as well as a remarkable likeness to the original). Michael Sheen as Prime Minister Tony Blair is also excellent in his portrayal of fresh young energy in public life, with a clear sense of nation, and its swift changing dynamics (another close look-alike). Other roles are less important, occasionally muddled, and sometimes biased. Younger supernumeraries on the scene add contrast as smart-ass irreverent sceptics, and the film suggests a deeper crisis of monarchy than probably in reality occurred. Ultimately, in any case, the nation appears to overcome whatever trauma there was, with institutions and Her Majesty comfortably intact.
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