The Queen
Directed by Stephen Frears
Written by Peter Morgan
Starring Helen Mirren and Michael Sheen
Hellen Mirren in The Queen
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Classification: G
Rating: ***½
Bow, curtsy, because Helen Mirren is able to do in The Queen what the Queen has never been able, or willing, to do for herself. Mirren humanizes our Liz, managing to find, beneath the heavy crown and the wrought-iron perm and the leaden bifocals, a living, breathing, tough, vulnerable, smart, ironic, confused and ultimately sympathetic woman. That's quite a coup, but it isn't the only achievement of this thoroughly engaging picture. Succeeding where most docudramas fail, it turns a slice of recent history into a revealingly intelligent entertainment, without being didactic at one extreme or sentimental at the other. There's wit here, but the comedy is never cruel; and there's compassion, but the emotion is never maudlin.
That shows remarkable restraint, given the size of the targets -- monarchs and politicians extend a gilt-edged invitation to satire. But Peter Morgan's script takes no cheap shots, and Stephen Frears's direction is careful to act in kind. Instead, their take on history is mature but popular, offering the solidity of a traditional text minus the dryness. Fittingly so, since that very tension -- the traditional versus the popular -- seasons the slice in question. The period is late August-early September of 1997, the time of Princess Diana's death. Yet her death is just the cause: What interests this film are the effects -- the subsequent behaviour of the Royal Family, along with the Prime Minister and the British public, during the immediate aftermath of the tragedy.
Frears (whose impressive canon can now be said to stretch from My Beautiful Laundrette to Buckingham Palace) frames the picture with a pair of visits by Tony Blair to the Queen's chambers. These parallel "audiences" act as before-and-after snapshots of how their relationship evolved in light of that fateful week in September. But the pivotal event, of course, is the accident in the Paris tunnel, leaving the screen to go blank and the movie to get down to the behind-the-scenes business at hand.
Elizabeth and her clan -- Philip (James Cromwell), the Queen Mother (Sylvia Sims), Charles (Alex Jennings) -- receive the bleak news at their Balmoral estate in rugged Scotland. With the exception of an obviously aggrieved, and perhaps guilty, Charles, the others seem almost impassive as they casually watch the reports on television (a recurring trope that allows Diana to appear only through archival footage). For the Queen, this is obviously "a private matter" and her concern is mainly for the well-being of "the boys." To that end, Philip's idea of grief-counselling is to take the grandkids on a hunting expedition the very next day. Nothing like a spot of fresh air, what?
By contrast, Blair (Michael Sheen) twigs immediately to the scope of the occasion, saying "This is going to be massive." His shrewd press secretary coins the phrase "the people's Princess," and Blair is quick to invest in it, building some major political capital. For a man freshly elected, this is his coming-out party. But thanks to Sheen's deft performance and that always insightful script, the PM emerges as more than an opportunist. Sure, he is that, but, in sharp contrast to his anti-monarchist wife ("They're a bunch of free-loading, emotionally retarded nutters"), the populist Blair also harbours a real respect for the tradition of the royals. Like any pol, he admires the sheer longevity of their reign, their capacity to survive in power. So, as the weeping public grows ever more disenchanted with the Queen's silence, Blair offers his strong advice: to respect the mood of the country and reconsider her objection to a public funeral.
She does, which prompts a hissy fit from the Queen Mum -- seems the processional "model" chosen for Di's funeral is the very one she had so carefully designed for her own send-off. Yes, fun does get poked at the "nutters," and comedy pops up throughout, but it's always balanced by the backstage intrigue and by something more precious -- a developing empathy for the Queen, for this old-fashioned woman perched so precariously at the edge of her not-so-honoured throne.
This is where Mirren weaves her magic. Her impression -- the accent, the walk, the regal reserve -- is spot-on. But far better is her brave descent beneath the icon deep into character. Mirren convinces us that Elizabeth's impassivity, even insensitivity, arises largely from an entrenched belief that her ceremonial duty must be discharged untainted by partiality and unclouded by emotion. This is how she truly thinks her subjects wish her to behave, and her shock at their "shift in values" is profound. The Queen is astonished by the outpouring of grief from hitherto stiff upper lips, and confused about its motivation -- she was, after all, not alone in this wonderment.
With that in mind, watch for a wonderful sequence when Elizabeth, tooling about the Balmoral highlands in her antiquated Land Rover, gets bogged down in a muddy stream. Wading out for help, she spots the magnificent stag that Philip has been stalking and, struck by its beauty, shoos it out of harm's way. But later, the stag is shot and, over its corpse at least, the Queen does what humanity demands, and grieves. However, despite her feelings, she also does what custom dictates, and offers the hunters her "congratulations."
Unlike the researched history, that sequence is pure fiction, but it perfectly reveals the chains of office, the ties of tradition, and how tightly they bind. The lesson is clear: There's a price to pay for power, and a larger price for offering it your life-long obeisance. In the final frame, the film's "after" snapshot, a chastened Queen shows herself in full command of that lesson. A beaming Tony Blair must wait to learn it.
