Everybody's a Queen Nowadays

Rating: 10/10 (2 November 2007)

If this is an accurate representation of how the Royal Family behaved and what it said during that fateful week, then hats off to them. This is the modern world, you know, where one can send a text message to ease one's conscience over 300,000 dead after a tsunami, invade a country in which half the population are teenagers, and, just as they do in a country like Iran, tear one's hair out in the street over the death of someone one never even met. Bovarism, after Madame Bovary, was one of Aldous Huxley's favourite adjectives, and it means pretending to have feelings which one doesn't really have. The results, as he so scathingly portrayed, can only be disastrous. But the Great Blubbering British Public, pawn of the media, bald and obese and with leisure time on its hands, its stiff upper lip quivering like crazy and righteous indignation on its side, wanted to have a Great British Cry and a Big British Sulk over their Favourite Royal Personage, a public figure who came out with some of the silliest and creepiest comments ever heard, and turn what should have been a private affair into a cabaret spectacle. Blood on their hands  what absolute twaddle! Then go off and give the likes of Elton John a popularity boost while you're still sobbing your socks off. Makes you proud to be British, doesn't it? If nothing else, this film does demonstrate how easily means of communication manipulate public opinion, and that's always just a step away from some fanatic coming into power. With superb editing, production design, sterling impressions all round (James Cromwell!) and a poignant prediction from the Queen on the fate of Tony Blair at the end of the movie, it's a shame it won only one Oscar.