>>REVIEW
THE QUEEN
STARRING Helen Mirren and James Cromwell
DIRECTED BY Stephen Frears
Opens Friday, October 20
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· May 1, 1997: The people of Great Britain vote for change and a modern perspective by sweeping Tony Blair and his Labour party into power after 18 years of Conservative rule.
· August 31, 1997: Royal rebel Princess Diana, one of the most photographed and beloved women in the world, dies tragically in a car crash while being pursued by paparazzi on motorcycles.
· September 5, 1997: After six days of public outcry over a stubborn Royal Family’s lack of response, the Queen reluctantly breaks with tradition to issue a public statement on this "private" tragedy.
· September 6, 1997: Following a week of unprecedented public grief the nation comes to a halt as millions line the streets for Diana’s public funeral.
So goes a timeline known all too well by Royal watchers everywhere and the stage, as it has been set, for Stephen Frears’ (The Grifters, High Fidelity) career-capping docu-drama, The Queen.
When I first got wind of this film I had flashbacks (for equivocal reasons only) to World Trade Center, Oliver Stone’s atrociously simple-minded glorification of a monumental tragedy, but watching The Queen helped to reassure me that a film is capable of being based on recent tragedies without being steeped in heavy-handed manipulation.
What makes The Queen so refreshing to watch is that Frears’ film has no particular agenda, that is to say it does not use the socio-political tension surrounding this historic event as an opportunity to take a partisan stance. Instead, what we’re offered is a deeply intimate (albeit fictionalized) character study of a country torn between its allegiances to past and future and suddenly stumbling in the throwes of growing pains.
Set almost exclusively during the week between Diana’s death and her funeral (a time when millions converged in London to mourn her death, creating a sea of flowers outside the palace gates). the film divides its focuses between the quiet struggles of a stoic Queen Elizabeth II (a perfectly restrained Helen Mirren) and the rest of the Royal family as they hole-up in a Scottish Castle. The ambitious new House Majority Leader Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) confronts the tragedy head-on in the streets of London, earning the admiration of the public with his pronouncement of Diana as the "People’s Princess."
Frears and the entire cast and crew have hit their marks and what we’re given is a beautifully provoking – even humorous – dance between traditionalists and modernists. |
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