Letting daylight in upon magic

Rating: 7/10 (19 May 2007)

The Queen is an unusual proposition because the events it dramatises pose similar concerns for the filmmakers to those experienced by the characters. The emphasis is on striking the right note  the challenge for Helen Mirren, reflecting the conundrum faced by the real monarch back yonder, is presenting the monarch in the best light possible. In a mirror of September 1997, the trick here was to avoid some potentially disastrous hurdles and struggle for the right balance.
As a viewer I have difficulties of my own watching the Queen. The constitutional monarchy is as gross anachronism in a modern state that has pretensions of being a meritocracy and for that matter a fully fledged democracy. It embodies some fairly grotesque principles, not least hereditary privilege and deference to an institution that personifies inequality, ironically held in the highest regard by the strata of society that is least well off. If you could design a system from scratch it's hard to imagine a model that would seem more ridiculous. Those who defend the idea and indeed the Royal family itself usually do so because so embedded is the class system in Britain, bleeding as it does into the every vein and capillary of British life, that something in their breeding tells them they're inferior and lack the mythic aura to hold the highest office in the land. It'd be like letting a chimp fly an aircraft. This inverted snobbery hits at the collective immaturity that allows the British people to subordinate themselves and preserve elites. Anything that threatens their existence is therefore desirable.
On the other hand, public reaction to the death of Diana was one of the most hysterical and outright bizarre outpourings of public grief in modern times. An inexplicable gush of sentimentality that gripped the nation as though someone had put ecstasy into the water supply. Papers, furious of the Queen's typically measured and withdrawn response, spoke of her subjects 'suffering'. Martin Lewis fought back tears on the BBC news. Millions left flowers and cried their eyes out in public. Nothing had been seen like it before or since. Anything approaching normal behaviour had obviously forgotten to wear its seat belt too.
So unusually, I watched the Queen both sympathetic to the confusion and outright indignation she presumably felt, at having to cow to this ludicrous collective nervous breakdown and the publics legitimate right to demand her compliance and example in a time of so called national crisis. Stephen Frears' film respects both arguments.
Helen Mirren, taking on the unenviable job of making the Queen a three dimensional human being, successfully presents Elizabeth as both dutiful and understandably perturbed by the public mood.
Whether you believe in the monarchy or not, it's hard not to feel a pang of sympathy for Liz as she attempts to reconcile her own values with those of her equally insane subjects. The flip side of course is that the public comes off less well, epitomised in no small part by Cherie Blair and Alistair Campbell, representing the kind of cynicism that gives apologists for the status quo the Oxygen for their reactionary arguments. They decry the fact she's out of touch, a funny sort of criticism when it's that very fact that's kept the Monarchy going throughout the 20th century. The public's hypocrisy was berating the Royals for acting like the rest of us  divorcing, having affairs, etc, what Bagehot famously referred to as letting daylight onto magic, and then lambasting them for not acting in step with Joe Public when the occasion demanded it.
Martin Sheen, reprising his role as Tony Blair, following the TV drama 'The Deal', is equal to Mirren in inhabiting his character completely, transcending mere impersonation. Frears pokes gentle fun at the New Labour figurehead, the scenes in his self-named Newcastle football shirt designed to show a little bit of the self-gratification that marked his early years in office. The closing scenes with Mirren, in which she warns him that the public are a fickle bunch whose affection can disappear faster than a princess in a Paris tunnel, hint at the hubris and the inevitable fall from grace. The script succeeds best however is showing the clash of Blair's new politics with the old establishment. The film mischievously toys with those in reverence to both worlds with James' Cromwell's Prince Phillip aghast at the homosexuals attending Diana's funeral highlighting aristocratic opposition to changing social attitudes, while Blair's lack of substance is hinted at when he gets a ringing endorsement from Tracy Ullman, phoning in her gushing tribute from Los Angeles in a CNN interview.
Ultimately the film is a bit of a valentine to its subject matter. So what if The Queen mourns a stag more than the mother of her grandchildren  Blair sums the argument up a nutshell when he launches a tirade at a flippant Alistair Campbell. Diana lacked the selflessness and devotion to the institution that the Queen, perhaps alone, had upheld. "She (Diana) threw what she (The Queen) offered back in her face and then flaunted it in front of the media, undermining everything she stands for" is Blair's and the filmmakers assessment of the martyred princess. It's hard to disagree and harder yet to understand what an odd people we are for caring about it all in the first place. Sometimes it seems that cut off from the rest of society really is the sanest place to be.
Incidentally, in an interesting bit of life imitating art symmetry, Mirren  a republican by all accounts, withered like Blair, another moderniser, when accepting her Oscar. "Ladies and gentleman, the Queen!" she proudly announced, like she was proposing a toast to an invisible set of dinner party guests. It was wince inducing and grotesque but good shorthand for the establishment reverence that guarantees the monarch's continued existence. Will we ever learn? The events of 1997 suggest we'd have to grow up first.