Killer Queen

The Queen

(PG-13)

originally published December 6, 2006

Helen Mirren

I don’t get the fascination with the royal family. I have an uncle who was so mesmerized by the royals that my family gave him a book of paper doll Dianas (replete with splendid outfits to adorn her pulpy figure). If you’re not a servant of the crown, what’s the regal deal? Stephen Frears’ new film about England’s delicate dance of power and protocol has me singing a different tune that sounds an awful lot like “God Save the Queen.” A sort of sequel to Frears’ award-winning television movie, The Deal, The Queen is a royal “West Wing,” allowing a glimpse behind the purple curtain. Portraying her second Elizabeth in a year, Dame Helen Mirren, who won an Emmy for the HBO miniseries Elizabeth I, brings all her graceful control and ice-cold radiance to a Royal Majesty blind-sided by the sudden death of former daughter-in-law, mother of the future King of England, and constant thorn in her crown, Princess Diana.

The Queen, perspicaciously written by Peter Morgan (The Last King of Scotland) with a deftly light comic touch that detracts nothing from the gravity of the dark hour, posits what transpired in the private chambers of the monarchy as Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip (James Cromwell, joyously grumbling from the Queen’s long shadow), HM The Queen Mother (Sylvia Syms, doused in sweet and sour antiquation), and Charles, the Prince of Wales (Alex Jennings, whose resemblance to the ruddy maybe-monarch lies in a perfect imitation of his bearing and carriage), dealt with stunning blow after blow. No precedent existed for properly dealing with a woman dubbed “the People’s Princess” by newly-elected Prime Minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen, reprising his role from The Deal). How does one mourn a woman one privately loathes but publicly must adore? Insulated as she is, the Queen fails to fully grasp the relationship that existed between the public and Diana. The subsequent media frenzy, global mourning and funereal circus shock the sovereign, who foments animosity in her people by grieving in the proper British way - “quietly, with dignity” is how she puts it.

Fortunately for her, the new PM, "Tony" as he wishes to be informally known, is a modernist, a revolutionary. He understands the people as she cannot, and he is willing to “save [those] people [the Windsors] from themselves.” As he notes, he has little else to do as PM. The epic nature of this micro-struggle between outdated tradition and untried modernity deepens this very complex Queen. Were it a simple biopic, or a mere reenactment of the days leading up to Di’s funeral, I’d have little to recommend besides Mirren and Sheen’s perfect apings of these living figures of power. And they are frighteningly spot on. Mirren is all but guaranteed an Academy Award nomination, her third. The Academy loves Brits and literal interpretations of historical figures (comparison makes the Academy’s job easier). But her Elizabeth is not just a majestic mimicry. Mirren is tasked with more than pinching her features and donning hideously huge glasses. Elizabeth’s detachment automatically withdraws from her sympathy account. Her staunch traditionalism, her stiff upper lip, and her unwavering adherence to centuries-old protocol supersede her femininity, her motherliness and her grandmotherliness.

For a woman to rule as she has for as long as she has, Elizabeth has had to sharpen her softer angles. Queen since she was 25, she has seen 10 PMs (in the film, she reminds Blair that Churchill was her first) come and go, yet on the throne she still sits. What Mirren accomplishes so brilliantly is a humanization, a feminization, of the world’s most powerful surviving monarch. We no longer see the frosty public face of Elizabeth II; we see Mirren’s emotional survivor, a monarch willing to scrap procedure to save herself and the monarchy. And we respect the real Elizabeth all the more for it.

I’d be remiss not to mention Sheen in an elucidation of the film’s superb acting. He more than captures the puppyish grin, though he does that impeccably, that belies a dogged tenacity to update England for the 21st century. His Tony Blair grows from a schoolboy, intimidated by “The Presence,” to a leader capable of engineering a truce in England’s familial spat between monarch and subjects.

The Queen’s most pleasant surprise is its sense of humor. Frears, whom I’ve only recently forgiven for fouling up High Fidelity with Transatlantic relocation (the magnificent Dirty Pretty Things certainly went a long way toward redeeming the director), doesn’t weigh down Morgan’s delightfully lean script. Frears and Morgan pack a four-hour miniseries of complexity (tradition vs. modernity, queen vs. prime minister, people vs. queen) into 97 minutes, and the film remains crisp and clear as a beautiful winter’s day. The Queen is more than a stringing together of wonderful performances. Without stripping the royals of their majesty, the film shows them as the people they are, however unlike us they may be.

Drew Wheeler