A Queen fit for an Oscar

Rating: 10/10 (3 November 2006)

As a Scot living in SF for years, I'm detached from the Windsor - Spencer divide. I went only as a Mirren fan. And was enthralled. Mirren is the queen I first saw in 1953 and seen age. The clothes, the hair, the walk and what the stills can't show, the voice. I passed Balmoral last summer and imagined what I knew well, what a joy it must be for the queen to be able to walk for miles beyond reach of press-parasites. and the combination of every character in the movie being real and the script being fiction but fiction of the highest order makes this a special movie. the queen's personal private secretary was wonderful as the constant bearer of unwelcome news. my one criticism is the script's failure to show how much Di failed to play by the royal rules and how much she flouted those rules in awesomely vulgar ways. Dodi, really? where were her Spencer instincts when that nouveau came along? showing Di's public faults would have made the queen's response to Di's death much more human. a superior script, awesome acting by all. what will Mirren wear to the Oscars!!