The Queen
Length: Single
Studio: Miramax Films
Rated: PG-13
Website: http://www.thequeen-movie.com/
Release Date: 2006-11-03
Cast: Helen Mirren, Michael Sheen, James Cromwell, Sylvia Syms, Helen McCrory
Director: Stephen Frears
Screenwriter: Peter Morgan
Music Score: Abbie Lister, Tony Lewis
WorkNameSort: Queen , The
Our Rating: 4.00
For director Stephen Frears, The Queen is hardly the return to gritty, British social realism for which fans of early work like Prick Up Your Ears have been yearning. But for a film in the royal family subgenre ‘ in which stuffy politeness, nauseating charm and TV-movie humor have long been calling cards ‘ The Queen has plenty of dirty pretty things up its opulent sleeves. Examining the week of Elizabeth II’s (Helen Mirren) well-documented silence following the death of shunned Princess Diana in August 1997, The Queen contrasts her hidebound methods of keeping the funeral a restrained, private matter with the bold ideas of new Prime Minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen), just elected and at the height of his popularity. Diana, shown only in seamlessly integrated stock footage, is hardly deified, and neither is Elizabeth, who in Mirren’s skilled hands has never seemed so vulnerable and sympathetic. This is a thoughtful look at the difficult process of rebounding from tragedy and of reactionary modernism encroaching on moribund tradition, even if a patronizing final scene feels the need to spell this out for the audience.
This article appears in Nov 1-7, 2006.