Films set from the reign of George III and later usually face one problem head on: how to justify the ongoing existence of a monarchy in a country where the monarch no longer has any well-defined powers as a ruler. A few years ago, I argued that from The Madness of King George onwards, the usual solution has been to narrate how the monarch gets his (or her) "glamour" back--how, that is, they reemerge as unifying national symbols who reside beyond the taint of the political, a process that often requires the help of a civilian guide. Frequently enough, having rescued the country by rescuing the monarch, the all-too-helpful civilian finds himself kicked to the curb at the end (The King's Speech is an important exception to this rule). All of these things play out before--indeed, require--an eager public to consume the monarch's image. But The Favourite tackles a different problem, yet one recognizably filtered through the preoccupations associated with symbolic monarchy films: what happens to the glamour conferred by divine right when the supposedly powerful monarch is merely a civilian tool?
The Favourite opens with a nod and wink to King George: whereas that film begins with the king's robing for the opening of Parliament, The Favourite opens with the queen's disrobing after the speech. Figuratively shedding the mantle of earlier monarchy films, which if nothing else are often Oscar-bait for costume design, The Favourite revels in announcing its disinterest in the history that purportedly underlies its plot. The film has a complicated relationship to the satires of the real Duchess of Marlborough's friend Arthur Maynwaring; here, the satires don't exist, and are replaced instead by Abigail's initial attempt to blackmail Sarah and then Sarah's own attempt to blackmail the Queen with the Queen's love letters to her. Abigail loses years off her age--she was considerably Masham's senior--while Sarah loses all her children and Queen Anne her husband. That Abigail was related to both Sarah and Harley goes similarly unmentioned. Events that took about six years to unfold here appear to transpire in a matter of weeks. So The Favourite does its best to emulate Her Majesty, Mrs. Brown (also known as the film with the missing Prime MInister) when it comes to cheerfully abandoning all pretensions to accuracy. At the same time, the contrast between the period interiors and the twenty-first century women's costumes (geometrically-ornamented "sketches," as it were, of appropriate dress), language, and, most famously, dance moves continually reminds the viewer that this film is mediated through our own aesthetics and politics.
One of The Favourite's most interesting deviations from the contemporary monarchy film, in fact, is that the focus is on Queen Anne's relationships to other women: films about Victoria and the two Elizabeths primarily focus on the queen and men, whether as political or romantic objects. As has been oft-remarked by the critics, the film plays games with gender stereotypes: the men's more accurate costumes appear "feminine" to a modern viewer (men ought to be "pretty," Harley remarks), in contrast to Anne's and Sarah's masculine riding habits and shooting garb. But the men also spend as much time as the bored queen playing silly games like racing ducks and throwing fruit at each other. Arguably, the only character in the film with a gimlet-eyed approach to politics is Sarah--even her romantic relationship with the queen is integral to her agenda. Moreover, because the Queen actually makes decisions, instead of being reduced to a ventriloquist's dummy (in theory, anyway), the division of power by gender becomes much more complex: the politicians can try to manipulate the Queen, but they can't make a move without her giving the OK; if they do manipulate the Queen successfully, it's through the medium of another woman. Indeed, the women (even the Queen) are much more alert to the politics of sex and courtship than the men.
The public/private split that takes up so much of the post-George films' attention here reappears as the conflict between Sarah (who manipulates the Queen for what she believes is the national good) and Abigail (who has no ambitions beyond ensuring her own safety after years of abuse). The wider public is noticeably missing altogether: the Queen has no contact with anyone beyond the palace boundaries and only hears about their opinions (and riots) secondhand--foreshadowing the ultimate fate of Sarah's letter at the end. Wheeled to a dance, the gouty queen must sit by herself and watch, and she clearly spends much of her time alone and self-absorbed. Thus, instead of focusing on the Queen (re)learning how to perform in order to settle national unrest, the film emphasizes how Sarah and Abigail compete in their performances for the Queen--Abigail's flattery (but is it always?) vs. Sarah's truthfulness (but is it always?). Sarah, the character who fits most neatly into the contemporary monarchy film's more traditional plot, suffers the usual fate of all non-royal advisers--but without accomplishing her goals. In a sense, the film acts as a thematic prequel to the symbolic monarchy films, as Anne willingly (if not always wittingly) relinquishes the political power that later monarchs conspicuously fail to possess.
A lot of viewers were baffled by those bunnies at the end, incidentally. My own reading of that closing image was that the rabbits (her "children," standing in for the seventeen lost pregnancies and dead children) have represented throughout an emotional alternative to Sarah, Abigail, and all the rest: the rabbits are the Queen's emotional utopia of sorts, an escape to a psychological place in which nothing is demanded of her other than food, water, and petting. The rabbits have no ulterior motives and make no judgments. But as the juxtaposition to the Queen's physically and sexually abusive demonstration of power over Abigail suggests, the Queen's love for the rabbits is also amoral (and, of course, vice-versa). The rabbits are the Queen's fantasy of uncomplicated happiness; Abigail, however, is what the Queen has.
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