How real is the Queen?

Rating: 6/10 (19 December 2007)

The IMDb trivia page tells us that screenwriter Peter Morgan spoke to many insiders to gather the ticklish details that inform this movie; is it fair to wonder if some of those sources may have had a vested interest in how certain principals are portrayed? Not to carp unnecessarily, but Tony Blair as portrayed in this film comes off a great deal closer to Hugh Grant in "Love Actually" than any real-life politician has a right to. He becomes little more than a mouthpiece for the screenwriter's better instincts. (Any hint of cynicism in the motives of 10 Downing Street is safely offloaded onto Alastair Campbell.) Yet Sheen (who was recently drafted by the same writer to play David Frost onstage) is quite good; he's eerily Blairish, and it's easy to imagine his startled, amused reactions as being those of the genuine Blair facing the real thing, the monarch, the Queen.
But how real is the Queen? We are told, by this film, that she is more real than we might imagine, despite having lived one of world's strangest possible lives, and the notion is undeniably charming. As presented by "The Queen," the entity of Elizabeth II comprises an intriguing mixture of naivete and worldliness, cushioned detachment and sly, sometimes prickly wisdom. When she tells newcomer Blair that he is the eighth Prime Minister to sit before her, Winston Churchill being the first, we see a flash of tightly smiling panic on his face -- he's like a young man learning about his older mistress's past lovers. How does he measure up? The movie displays great deftness in catching these wonderful little nuances of the way society and royalty interact, and these touches are so entertaining that one almost regrets the overarching plot that demands the reconciliation of these two deeply odd entities -- it's the moments of disconnect that draw you in the most.
The cast is good all round, with particular kudos to James Cromwell, Roger Allam, and Sylvia Sims. But of course none of this would work without the towering presence of Helen Mirren, whose performance cannot be overpraised. With no showiness or visible self-indulgence she suggests an absolutely credible complexity in her assumption of authority: from the moment she appears she simply is the Queen of England. (Within a few minutes you may forget what the real one looks like.) She's marvelous, unaffected, and compulsively watchable, and she holds the whole movie on her shoulders without seeming to notice the burden. Morgan's screenplay is witty and filled with snarky gossip, but it ultimately adds up to no more than glib, and Frears' direction, while characteristically stylish, adds little in the way of profundity. All in all, we have a respectable little entertainment that happens to be anchored to a remarkable and mysterious presence, embodied by an equally remarkable and highly empathetic performer. "The Queen" is worth seeing for that alone.