The Queen

Academics have long been interested in the history of royal iconography; no doubt it's time for a history of how playwrights, novelists, and screenwriters/directors have turned a sharp eye on kingly or queenly image-management.  Stephen Frears' The Queen is a recognizable, if sometimes indirect, descendant of the last decade or so's crop of royal biopics: The Madness of King George (1995), Mrs. Brown (1997), and Elizabeth (1998) all scrutinized the reigning monarch's strategies (or non-strategies) for constructing his or her public persona in the midst of political crises.  "I have remembered how to seem," muses Alan Bennett's George III, and "seeming" is the key to maintaining social stability.  No matter how much or how little political power the monarch actually wields, his or her ability to embody the nation's idea of The King or the Queen repeatedly proves to be the glue that holds the otherwise fragile national puzzle together.

The Queen is most like the far-inferior Mrs. Brown in its central predicament: the queen's apparently inexplicable absence from an increasingly media-saturated culture.  In Mrs. Brown, the newspapers and satirical magazines are at issue; in The Queen, the tabloids and television come to the fore.  As The Queen opens, Elizabeth II (Helen Mirren) poses for a realistically-rendered portrait--a moment of old-fashioned, "traditional" iconography.  The sequence ends with her staring starkly and stoically at the viewer, an image echoed near the end by a video capture of a far more vulnerable Diana.  These two moments capture the film's central conflict: the collapse of more conservative royal image-making in the face of the video age.  In fact, the film frequently consists of images of television images, carefully framed by the television itself.  While The Queen draws the familiar comparisons between the apparently deadened nature of court protocol and the supposedly livelier quality of "real life"--the Blairs, for example, live in a wonderfully messy house, with toys and papers littered everywhere--it also reminds us that the new video order has its own rigid protocols. 

It's true that the film is not especially sympathetic to anybody, the queen aside.  Prince Charles (Alex Jennings) is wimpy and wriggly, negotiating with Blair behind his mother's back, while Prince Philip (James Cromwell, the odd American out in this cast) apparently thinks that the best cure for losing one's mother is a good day's hunting.   Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) is very much a media construct, although the film ultimately grants him a core of sincere admiration for the monarch's struggles.  The Queen herself clunks about in dowdy clothes and sensible shoes, displaying far more affection for her various dogs than for the newly departed.  But the film nevertheless represents her final decision as an act all the more heroic because it arose from a sense of duty, a devotion to something larger than herself--a devotion that, as Blair finally explodes near the end, Diana pointedly failed to share. 

Comments

[Stephen Brown]

I'd love to see the movie. Too bad I live in the middle of nowhere. No major city around me is showing it or intends to show it.

[John Thomas McGuire]

"The Queen" might be the best movie of 2006. Unfortunately, besides the apparent Oscar for Helen Mirren, and perhaps an award for best screenplay, I doubt that this small, intelligent, intricate film will beat out competitors like "Dreamgirls" for best picture. One can only hope....

[Jonathan Dresner]

I actually saw it, on the airplane coming back from the AHA. I did miss a bit in the middle -- though you really don't need sound during that stag sighting -- but thought it was quite good, for what it was.

I do have one quibble, though: maybe it was the angle, or something, but the final frozen image of Diana looked positively sinister to me. Blair's conversion is presaged by any number of suggestions that Diana wasn't as nice in private as she was in public, and ultimately she comes across as, at best, a terrible fit for the Royals.