In the opening scene of The Queen, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, makes a joke. Granted, it's not a knee-slapper. She's complaining about not being allowed to vote, and when her official portrait painter reminds her that whatever government is chosen is hers, she says dryly, "That is some consolation.
"
It's an important moment, for unless you're up for a knighthood you're unlikely to ever see the monarch looking so human. The scene ends as the credits roll over what looks like a painting -- but it's Helen Mirren, who turns her head slightly to stare at the camera. It's as if a penny suddenly winked at you.
Mirren, already celebrated for portraying Queen Elizabeth I in a TV movie that aired this spring (she was also Queen Charlotte in The Madness of King George III), is astonishing for the mix of humanity and regality she brings to the role. It starts with the voice, which a lifetime of Monty Python sketches would convince most actresses should be played at a high register and with exaggerated diction. Mirren recognizes that Elizabeth can't possibly speak in her monarch voice all the time -- and besides, by definition anything she says is the Queen's English.
It also doesn't hurt that Mirren in a crown is much more Windsor than Imperial Margarine.
The look-alike casting continues with Michael Sheen as Tony Blair, the newly elected New Labour Prime Minister of Britain, whose first official meeting with the Queen provides a terrific comic set piece. Alone in "the presence" (i.
e., with the Queen), he fumbles the protocol, kneeling before her, speaking when he should be spoken to, and kissing her outstretched hand (her fluster suggests she was just offering to help him up). It's the starstruck reaction any of we commoners would likely have; as he explains to the staunchly anti-royalist Mrs.
Blair (Helen McCrory), "she's still, y'know, the Queen." We are amused. And moved.
The third major cast member is never seen except in flashback, which is the only way to know her now. Diana, Princess of Wales, died in a Paris car crash less than four months after Blair took office, sending the monarchy into paroxysms of self-doubt even as the elder royals breathed a collective sigh that this bothersome beauty, with her photogenic causes and celebrity pals, would vex them no longer.
Of course, the crux of the story is that Diana turned out to be more trouble dead than alive.
The bulk of Stephen Frears's film plays out in the week following the Princess's death in August, 1997, beginning with the Queen and Prince Philip roused with the news. "What's she done now?" Philip moans.
(There is some historical titillation in a royal being played by a man named James Cromwell.)
The Queen and family are at their summer palace in Balmoral, Scotland, when the news breaks. Philip charges into action: He'll take Diana's two sons, 12 and 17, for a bracing walk in the country, and perhaps a spot of hunting.
But the reaction of the British public could not be more opposite. Flowers pile up outside Buckingham Palace, and people want to know why its flag isn't at half mast. (The reason, that it's never been done, not even for George VI, doesn't wash.
) Blair, shown as naturally and not cynically taking the pulse of the nation, refers to Diana as "the people's princess" and begins to tiptoe around the idea of something more than the private burial favoured by the Royal family.
Charles, divorced and now a sort-of widower, tells Blair he's all for moving the monarchy into the 20th century -- the Prince and the Prime Minister are of the same generation, born just after the Second World War -- but he's even more terrified of mummy than Blair. Driving through the Scotland highlands with her, he whines, "Why do they hate us so much?
" only to be told, "Not 'us,' dear." (Perhaps "they" sense Philip's mood, comparing the public to a horde of Zulu warriors, and apparently wishing he could deal with them as such.)
Frears, whose films tend to celebrate the lower end of Britain's social spectrum (My Beautiful Laundrette, Mrs.
Henderson Presents), is remarkably kind to the royals, all things considered. Although Mrs. Blair gets to call them "freeloading, emotionally retarded nutters," her husband delivers a rousing speech in the Queen's defence, noting that not properly mourning the death of her former daughter-in-law is her first slip since the days of Churchill.
The relationship between the two leaders is in many ways emblematic of the push and pull of tradition and progress in Britain over the last few decades. Frears shows Blair in casual clothes, at one point taking a call from the Queen while wearing a football jersey in his Ikea-furnished den.
Her life, meanwhile, is an odd mix of the royal and the prosaic (they don't make jewel-encrusted Land Rovers, after all), and when she takes a call from Blair "in the kitchen," she disrupts a flock of chefs preparing a banquet.
As she stands next to a chopping block, a servant discreetly places a chair behind the royal, er, behind.
But the Queen also gets the last word, telling Blair he will face his own crisis one day, "quite suddenly and without warning." This would seem more prescient if Blair's star wasn't already setting as this film got under way.
He resigns as party leader next year. The Queen, in comparison, is still going strong.
A study a few years ago found Elizabeth II to be the most common person in the dreams of Britons.
(In case your mind is wandering, the plots usually involve taking tea.) Whether Mirren's role will push Nicole Kidman and Angelina Jolie out of men's reveries remains to be seen, but she is without doubt the stuff that queens are made of.
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