An interesting piece in that it's really 2 movies

Rating: 7/10 (9 January 2007)

The Queen is very interesting in that it works as two entirely different movies depending on the audience. To a British citizen or an Anglophile, the movie works as a political docudrama taking an interested viewer further behind the scenes of a historic event that they're already intimately familiar with, much like "All the President's Men" or "Good Night and Good Luck." Watching "The Queen" is the current events equivalent to rewatching your favorite movie on DVD with a commentary track.
At the same time, to those like myself who aren't well-versed with the cultural and political complexities of the UK and who watched the clamor surrounding Princess Diana's death with passing disinterest, it was more of a period piece: an epic tale that makes for both a story composed of historical facts as well as a parable of lessons relatable to our current state of society.
The main challenge, therefore, is to make detached viewers like myself care enough about these characters, which it does increasingly so as the film progresses.
The film starts out as a portrait of an aging political figure facing a dying way of life that will diminish her power and perhaps deservedly so. Queen Elizabeth II, played by Helen Mirren, is confronted with the recent ascension to power of a new Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who is seen as a possible threat to her prestige for championing modernization and various other liberal causes. Their relationship forms over a crisis over how the Royal Family should properly respond to the death of Princess Diana, who is a thorn in the Royal Family's side for disowning the royal way of life. Since she is loved by the masses, she serves as a fairly obvious representation of the dichotomy between tradition and modernity that is at the film's center.
The film's strength, however, is that it doesn't pigeonhole its two main characters as the personification of either of those two sides. Each is a more complex person trying to navigate their ways through the pressures that those sides and people on them present. At its heart, "The Queen" is about the common ground that must be met between two very different political figures, and the possible friendship they form out of it. The film preaches that with democracy in the hands of the masses, everyone at the top is just as likely to be misunderstood by their subjects and power is a delicate thing.
The film is currently in the running for a best picture Oscar nomination and while it succeeds at what it is trying to do and serves as an interesting study of politics and class conflict, it doesn't have the gravitas to it that I feel would merit it an academy award nomination, especially in a year as competitive as this one.