Great movie for what it is....

Rating: 7/10 (15 May 2007)

Helen Mirren is absolutely superb. Let's just get that out of the way. But this movie sort of skims over the truth of the situation the Royals experienced with Diana. And it also skims over the truth about the Royals themselves.
First of all, I was truly upset to see the Queen and Prince Philip sharing the same bed. That is patently ridiculous, and it seemed to me that this was an embarrassingly glaring untruth known to all those involved in the movie. Everyone knows that that particular royal couple does NOT share a bed. I had read long ago that their children were conceived via artificial insemination. Theirs is definitely a marriage of convenience, a practice that is wholly accepted among Elizabeth's generation and before and which she definitely expected Diana to embrace. Poor, silly, Diana...she was actually looking for love in a royal marriage....what poor taste! One can almost imagine the queen looking down her nose at Diana for her ridiculous ideas.
All of Elizabeth's family have disappointed her in this way, so she must feel absolutely superior to them all.... Love in a royal marriage? How SELFISH! Above all, one must have an HEIR to extend the royal lineage!!! The British people must be frightfully fed-up with their society and the royals. One of the most telling lines in the movie is made by Tony Blair. Something like "this country will never be a Republic". That line truly gave me pause. Stupid me! I thought the place was really a republic.... I thought of how I experienced London when I visited several years ago. How truly important the distinction between the "classes" were, and how strangely male the country is.
One thing this movie did was to make me aware of how much I didn't know about Britain. How different Labour must be from the Conservative Party. How the royals must appear to their subjects and vice versa. What the emergence of Diana ("the People's Princess") really meant to the British. Imagine a royal who actually cared about the people! Imagine a royal who talked about love! Imagine a royal who actually mingled with the people and held the babies of the poorest and sickest in her arms and kissed them. This must have really annoyed Queen Elizabeth and that little family we see on the screen. Writing this now, I see how isolated Queen Elizabeth had become and how a mistake like the one in the movie could slip by her... She has no feelings for her people. When Queen Elizabeth opines that things have changed...this is what she is talking about.
I was very interested in the item one reviewer here brought up. How a 14-point stag must be culled or risk starving to death. Now I see that this is similar to Queen Elizabeth herself. Tony Blair saved her from being culled and put her back in the zoo with the rest of the endangered herd.
Unfortunately it is hard to tell fact from fiction in this account of a week in the life of Queen Elizabeth II. However, it all made me want to know more about the royals.
And to the reviewer who looked at the past 1,000 years of British rule with misty eyes, let us all remember that the Kings of England were a bloodthirsty lot, killed their own family members with glee and in more than one case were definitely treasonous and caused their subjects great difficulty and suffering. Which is why they've been reduced to the state they are in today. It's no wonder many people think they had Diana killed....their family history gives this idea a leg up...
The movie is very entertaining and the players are wonderful. Helen Mirren deserved the Oscar, even though she plays Elizabeth quite a bit younger than she was at the time.
But the royals? Queen Elizabeth has been quite successful at keeping her family dynamics hidden. Despite all the media attention. I suppose we are all longing to know what the Queen wears when she is slopping around the house, and this movie does give us a few tidbits.
I must say...I enjoyed this movie. It's thought-provoking, as you can see!