High-brow English humour and heart that subtly treads on the tragedy at hand

Rating: 8/10 (19 February 2007)

From the unsurpassed deconstruction of social class by Stephen Frears comes a prudent slice of royal British history, spanning across little more than a week of events. The death of the "People's Princess" Diana hedges the story with the ill malaise of the people turned scornfully against the Queen and her family for not grieving or acknowledging the tragedy.
The thematic conflict takes place between the obsolete old school (the Royal Family) inside the walls of Buckingham Palace and the reformist new school (newly-elected Tony Blair and the Labour Party) at 10 Downing Street, hovering between the two polarized households with stately direction. There is a point of hair-dresser gossiping tendencies in enjoying a film like "The Queen" as a candy box of intrigue is waiting to be unwrapped behind the closes walls of the monarchy, but Frears makes the content accessible to all.
Of course, "The Queen" as a person and film are not wholly grounded in reality; "Last King of Scotland" screenwriter Peter Morgan has scripted a fiction-based account of the dialogue and relations that took place in 1997, but an admirably reasonable take it is. Reality ties are not completely severed, and Stephen Frears makes the decision to further ground his film with newsreel footage interjected at common intervals and majestic steadicam shots that seems to aptly snap up the stately atmosphere of Buckingham Palace.
But "The Queen" is undeniably a custom-tailored vehicle for Helen Mirren who captures the complex nature of the titular character with stoic, dignified, purse-lipped composure. The staunch refusal to publicly speak about the event of Diana's deathnor allow for a civic funeral, nor fly the throne's flags at half-mast all alienated her immensely from her people, even though she was one of the people who grieved the most. Needless to say, this is a challenging role to inhabit, but Mirren is superb in all of her conflicted sorrow. The sum of her performance is all the little stoic details, the suppressed emotions she bottles up with a lid but which sometimes bubble up and how natural she makes "staged" appear.
It is in a way a pity that Helen Mirren's fine performance casts such a wide-ranging shadow over the rest of the cast. The film on its own may be rather lovely, but the key figure who emerges most prominently and most nobly is undoubtedly Tony Blair as portrayed by Michael Sheen, and who regrettably received next to no buzz. The fact is that Sheen is just as credible as Mirren in his own right, creating a layered and conflicted young Prime Minister with pending allegiances. Stephen Frears will always remain an actors' director and as a result the success of "The Queen" rests squarely on the apt shoulders of its cast. It's delightedly humorous in tone, practicing an unmistakable high-brow British comedy that subtly treads on the tragedy at hand.
8 out of 10