The Queen is a fictional imagining of what might have happened behind the scenes in the week following Princess Diana's death in a Paris car crash, an accident that occurred as she and her boyfriend, Dodi Al Fayed, were speeding away from paparazzi in hot pursuit on motorbikes. What, exactly, was going through the real Queen Elizabeth's head in refusing, at first, to make any sort of statement about the death of her former-daughter-in-law - a woman whom openly disliked -- even as the people of her country were plunged into mourning? In The Queen, screenwriter Peter Morgan blends facts with speculation: The recently elected Prime Minister Tony Blair - played, with perfect levels of chipmunkish brightness - has a better idea of what's going on among his constituents. He tries to nudge Elizabeth - without risking any disrespect - to appear before her subjects, to show some respect for their grief even if her own feelings must remain under wraps. Mirren's Elizabeth holds firm: She cares about Diana only inasmuch as the erstwhile princess was the mother of her grandchildren. Even her son, Charles (played, superbly, by Alex Jennings), griefstricken over his ex-wife's death, suggests rather pointedly to his mother that the world has changed but she has not. He even makes a not-so-veiled dig at her shortcomings as a mother.
The Queen is so beautifully made, and features such uniformly terrific performances, that you can't help wonder: How true to life could it possibly be? Frears didn't take this enterprise lightly. "If you make films about living people, you always feel a responsibility and you bend over backwards," he told the New York Times in an interview at the time of the film's release. "With the queen you're not only dealing with your responsibility toward her, but everyone in the audience has very strong feelings and knows a lot about her. So you don't do it casually. You have to be fair." In that same article screenwriter Morgan noted that his own mother, approximately the same age as the queen, shared many of her traits, particularly her thriftiness and her refusal to complain. "To do a hatchet job would have felt like matricide," he said.
In researching the screenplay, Morgan culled information from media reports and biographies, and conducted extensive interviews with royal and political insiders. Though he wouldn't reveal the identities of the people he interviewed, the Times noted that "he talked to anyone and everyone, from high-ranking courtiers to lowly stable hands." He also indicated that his sources were only too happy to talk and gossip. "I found the whole time that I had to dampen down the inflammatory nature of what I was being told," he said. "You have no idea how much hosing down and cooling of information we had to do. We were shedding and throwing out sensational information the whole time."
The movie Frears made from Morgan's screenplay is sly, perceptive, and ultimately moving, detailing the ways in which Elizabeth, supposedly a master of control, continues to mishandle events in the aftermath of Diana's death, much to Blair's frustration. She and the other members of the royal family - including Prince Philip (a wonderfully tweeded-up and daft James Cromwell), and the Queen Mother (Sylvia Syms, watching the whole spectacle through eyes that are more amused than disapproving) -- continue with their plans to take their holiday at Balmoral. There, Philip takes the grandchildren out to pursue a regal stag that's been spotted on the estate, while Elizabeth tromps around defiantly in a Barbour and sensible oxfords, as if feeling the earth beneath her feet were the surest way of surveying her kingdom.
But Frears seemed to know that not even royal feelings are that simple: Diana is barely a presence in the picture, but a few judiciously chosen real-life film clips suggest both her charm (very real) and her clever manipulations (also very real). As Frears said in an interview with Slate, "The documentary footage in the film grew, if anything, in the cutting room, because Diana was so vivacious. It is, if you think about it, peculiar, to have a contest in a film between one woman who is an actress and one woman who is herself, and also dead."
But in the public-relations battle between Elizabeth II and her very popular ex-daughter-in-law, The Queen strongly suggests that, over time, it is Elizabeth who will rule the day. Old-fashioned and dutiful, she may believe it's part of her duty to hide the fact that she's human. But despite what Johnny Rotten said in his lacerating 1977 punk anthem "God Save the Queen," Elizabeth II is a human being, and Mirren's performance reflects that beautifully. At one point, she's driven to rare tears, perhaps partly over Diana's death and partly over the situation her former daughter-in-law has thrust her into. Frears and Mirren don't show us those tears, but Mirren tells us everything we need to know, even though all we see is the back of her head. Those silvery curls quiver ever so slightly. We know what Mirren's Elizabeth thinking, even though we can't see her face. That's how you respect the dignity of a monarch, while also allowing her the necessary luxury of complicated human feelings.
SOURCES:
IMDb
The New York Times
Slate
Producer: Andy Harries, Christine Langan, Tracey Seaward
Director: Stephen Frears
Screenplay: Peter Morgan
Cinematography: Affonso Beato
Music: Alexander Desplat
Film Editing: Lucia Zucchetti
Cast: Helen Mirren (The Queen), Michael Sheen (Tony Blair), James Cromwell (Prince Philip), Alex Jennings (Prince Charles), Roger Allam (Robin Janvrin), Sylvia Syms (Queen Mother), Helen McCrory (Cherie Blair)
[color, 103 minutes]
