This is masterful mimicry; a confident, mesmerising portrayal of the Queen.

Rating: 9/10 (27 December 2006)

Wow, what a film. What a challenge in the first place. There's so little margin for error in mimicry, especially mimicry of the royal family; so many attempts in the past have been instantly tawdry. The brilliance of Helen Mirren is that she is so convincing; her mannerisms, expression and posture appear to be so consistent and accurate that you believe 'this is how the Queen must be'. I say 'appear to be', because the curious thing is that we all assume we know the Queen intimately enough to 'recognise' the mannerisms, to be able to say at the slightest wince or purse of the lips or reflective raising of the brow 'wow, that was spot-on'. Do any of us really know the Queen that well from what we've seen of her? Perhaps we do. But perhaps it is Mirren's confidence and consistency that makes her mimicry work. At the start of the movie, when she pulls herself up and changes her glance with a slight throaty chuckle, Mirren masterfully captures a character that we recognise as the Queen, without uttering a single word; we can almost sense what she was day-dreaming about. For me, that was extraordinary; it said so much about the depth of the portrayal and the character we seem to 'know' as the Queen. This, before any words were uttered at all.
The danger, of course, is that the portrayal is so convincing we tend to think not just 'that's how the Queen is', but 'that's how it must have been'. We need to remind ourselves that the film is only fiction based on assumptions of character and interpretations of events. Then again, maybe the fact that we need to do this is one of the film's triumphs.