Queen Helen

Rating: Null/10 (10 December 2006)

I love Helen Mirren, every un-botoxed square inch of that expressive face.
My first view of her was on public television playing Jane Tennison, a middle aged detective fighting sexism while solving the most gruesome crimes. She turned what would have been just another detective show into a human drama .
I next saw her in "Age of consent" a film made in 1969 when she was playing the young sexual temptation to James Mason. Wow, what a dish, She could have tempted anyone. Other actresses have attempted to preserve their youthfulness. But Helen Mirren had more to give. She has her humanity.
In "The Queen" she was an elderly Queen Elizabeth facing the challenge of reacting to the overwhelming national pain on the death of Princess Diana. It was a challenge that Elizabeth, for whom emotions are something to be contained rather than ever expressed, was unable to meet.
The film interwove archival footage with dramatizations of the reactions of the Royal family and the interplay of the new Tony Blair government. These few days of crisis shed light on a thousand years of tradition that has formed the complex relationship between the people of Great Britain and their Sovereigns. It is the story of two families. One is that of Elizabeth and Phillip and their progeny. The other family is the larger one, where Elizabeth has a place in the hearts of every English subject who has ever sang, "God save our Queen." I faintly remember the young and beautiful Princess Elizabeth when she was crowned in the 1950s. I knew, through documentaries, of her family, and her preternatural coolness toward her first born, Charles, whom she abandoned as an infant for a half year as she and her husband toured the world. She hated Diana, for many reasons, but clearly because she would no sooner had left her children than she would have cut off her arm. Diana, whatever her limitations, had a natural affection for people, crowds or intimates, that Elizabeth lacked.
Helen Mirren, and those who wrote and directed this film, managed to build on all that we know about the public figures who were represented. They were true to reality, so the private glimpses, whether real or imagined, were all the more poignant.
There was a scene, I don't think this counts as a spoiler, when she finally relented and walked among those who were congregating to mourn Diana, with mounds of flowers, many castigating the royal family. When she asked a child whether she could add her bouquet to the pile the child said simply, "no, these are for you." I was touched deeply. All the pain of a lifetime of restraint, and of isolation, was captured in that simple act of love for a woman, a mother of a country, whose place in the hearts of her people is indelible.
The film is a gem.