The Best British Film of 2006

Rating: 10/10 (10 March 2009)

The most acclaimed British film of 2006 - it won the British Academy Award for Best Film and the Academy Award for Best Actress - The Queen is quite remarkable in that it is only the second time the living monarch has been portrayed on screen and the first time a serving Prime Minister has been portrayed in a feature film (discounting comic cameos from Margaret Thatcher in 'For Your Eyes Only' and 'Water'). Essentially, a modern day 'Mrs Brown' (another film about how the Royal Family coped with a Royal death and how the Prime Minister helped the Queen overcome public unpopularity), it provides compelling account of the week Princess Diana died in September 1997. The Royal Family stay put in Balmoral, cut off and remote and treating the death as a purely private family matter (the Queen initially refuses Charles use of the Royal flight to fly to Paris in the early hours of the Sunday morning of Diana's death). Meanwhile, in London, Prime Minister Tony Blair (a totally convincing Michael Sheen) is in the thick of public grief and instantly sees that the Queen's aloofness is damaging the monarchy. Peter Morgan's screenplay throws up revelations: the phrase "people's princess" was Alastair Campbell's, scribbled down on hearing of Diana's death; the TV broadcast made by the Queen on the day before Diana's funeral was Tony Blair's idea; and, according to Morgan, Prince Charles was very much on Blair's side.
I loved everything about this film, especially's Mirren's performance that is neither caricature or impersonation. Mirren gets under the skin of a difficult role - someone everyone knows as a public person yet know little about in terms of the private person. Alex Jennings makes a sympathetic Prince Charles.
Stephen Frears' spot-on direction never hits a false note. The film should be essential viewing on each anniversary of Diana's death.