I'm impressed!

Rating: 9/10 (15 September 2006)

I'm impressed. The movie is good, and truthful. I'm not to judge how close to the truth were Balmoral scenes, but behavior of public and tabloids was perfectly recreated.
Warning, SPOILERS ahead.
The cast is wonderful. Hellen Mirren as Her Majesty The Queen and Michael Sheen as labor Prime Minister Tony Blair are as good as perfect. During the Queen's speech to the nation on live TV I wasn't able to determine if it was Mirren's voice, or the real Queen speaking. Often I found myself thinking that I'm watching archive material from that period's news, but then it turned out that the actors recreated everything! Wow! Both of them carry the movie and Mirren's award from Venice is well deserved. What's interesting, is that there are practically no right or wrong sides of the conflict here. At the beginning Blair is trying to mate with the public, but realizing that by doing this he undermines the monarchy, he is trying to correct the error. The Queen is keeping her ground, not bending to the tabloids demanding royal tributes paid to Diana (lower the royal flag on the mast above the Buckingham Palace, go back to London, live TV speech to the nation  something that wasn't done even when the previous king died!); while the Queen wishes to keep the matter private, to deal with it as a family, not The Royal Family, because Diana was no longer a part of it. The ending is very straightforward. Ironically, each side is presenting the other's point of view: Blair is bashing his adviser demanding respect for the Queen and talking about all the sacrifices she had to commit. The Queen is pointing out to Blair why he had changed his attitude and prophets the same treating from tabloids as the one she got. The most powerful scene for me was the one when the Queen returns to Buckingham Palace and takes a walk by the gate, looking at the flowers and cards left there by the public. No one really realized until now, that the Queen really must have seen what was written on these cards! And I felt ashamed "Diana, you were too good for them" or "Your blood is on their hands". There are fragments of interviews with Diana where she indirectly accuses the Queen of what bad had happened to her. Only today I realized, that Diana was attacking a person unable to defend herself! We don't really expect the Queen to appear on Jonathan Ross' to present her part of the story, do we? And there is a second face of this coin. The subplot of hunting and killing of a deer is script writer's comment on the monarchy. And a prophecy - very sad, at that. I know that it makes this movie a little bit more fictional, but the message had to be sent.
I loved it. Made me realize something that I thought I knew  the Queen is a living and breathing person. And that Diana was not the only victim of the media then. So was the Queen, and the monarchy.