Sovereigns for the masses

Rating: Null/10 (7 April 2010)

The usual problem with films concerning sovereigns is that they are reluctant to fully take charge and do what they have to do with their subject, whatever it is they want to do; the result is, invariably, melodramatic with a numbing streak, unless one is a fanatic for picturing the life of kings and queens on a middle-class level. I, for one, like films that would have me forget that the people depicted are sovereigns, so engrossing the ritual of power should be, but not for constantly reminding me that they, too, are humanely human people, after all.
They are not, or, rather, were. Once upon a time they had specific symbolic mandates, that nowadays seem imported from another solar system. But this little film wants to be luminous as the sun, no matter the solar system: miss Blunt's cheeks assure us for it, as if she was illumined by an inner thrust, and that's all fine, as is the obvious, layered effort a person of power should handle concerning all matters that entertain his acuity (or her blossoming femininity), but it is not enough.
The film, although guided by a director that shows a nuanced, sometimes on the verge of grand, assured grasp on compositional level (especially the sense of architectural building up in the first scene), falls allover the place. What is its subject actually? Nuance and variety of subjects cannot be the case. A bit of romance, a bit of machinations (but straightforward please, so as not to make it too much of a burden for young Victoria, after all, it's the "early years"), stunning costumes, matching sets, an entertaining Jim Broadbent as King, some romance, some royalty, etc. but it's a bore.
Abide on the surface, and it will tell what it has to. Paul Valery once said, "there is nothing more profound than surface." Why should we try to humanize it? What we get is a colorful, shining, unimaginative bore. Iznogud (know the comic?), if you get the homonym; like Rupert Friend, positively unassuming as he is, but isn't he like Orlando Bloom in the place of Orlando Bloom? Contrast to that the ever-effective Mr. Bettany as usually polishing his unsympathetic self, and the thing is already edgy as a lump.
Fluffy, too (one muses over how much importance did the casting gave to miss Blunt's chin resembling the one Queen Victoria had, and abides on the memory of that old 'French and Saunders' romp "me likey! look alikey!") and then oops! we have fallen into the carriage.
An attempt has been made toward our person.
Of course, no such thing in the affair called biography-must-show-integrity has the melodramatic accuracy exemplified by the film, but who gives a damn if the historic Albert was never involved in such a thing, since one can please the masses with such a dramatic pinnacle!
That slow-mo pinnacle condemns the film as a hoax, if not as the perennial ass-kissing aspiration to a monarchy we never witnessed, let alone had.
The film is a stately nuanced execution, but in a mocking manner, of what the philosopher Hegel, upon witnessing Napoleon passing on his horse, said: that he saw the State passing. If only we had that kind of awe-inspiring effect ensured by a film. But it seems the sensibility we get is like the one John Waters attacked in 'Serial Mom', in the scene where the inane viewer goes for one more round of John Huston's "Annie". Do you want to be polished, but still corny, albeit with a royal alibi? Is no good.