Sunday, March 18, 2007
The Queen
I don't think Tony Blair has much to worry about. For all that bloggers want his blood, either for the war or because he's Labour and they are Tories, for all that he is currently electoral poison for much the same reason, for the fact that he will be remembered for the war in Iraq than for anything else he did in Government, I suspect history may well treat him better than current affairs. One need only look at the various dramas in which he has been portrayed. They've tended to show someone nice . Someone who surprises everyone else by being the only moral man in a morality-free age. It's not his fault we went into Iraq, he was duped, his sense of right and wrong was subverted and used by that crooked Texan who wouldn't know 'right' if it was etched on to a gold brick and used to club him round the head. Gordon Brown has more cause to worry as The Deal showed him as too out-of-touch and old-fashioned to be either a decent Labour leader or Prime Minister and The Trial of Tony Blair had him as a weak and indecisive poor replacement for Tony. Two strikes against him and the only time he's in 10 Downing Street so far is to sleep at night.
And so we have The Queen. I don't understand why Helen Mirren is getting so much acclaim for her role as Liz Two. The film is largely a sequel to The Deal , a television drama of a few years ago about the careers of Blair and Brown up to the former's becoming the leader of the Labour party in the mid-nineties. The film opens on the day of the General Election in 1997, the Queen sitting for a portrait while Blair goes to vote. Michael Sheen reprises his role as Tony Blair and it's really his story, from his first meeting with the Queen when she asks him to form and lead a Government after his success in winning the election, through the long week after the death of Diana and his struggles to stop the Royal Family from letting tradition march it to self-destruction. Helen Mirren does not give a great performance as her role gives her no opportunity to show what she's capable, save perhaps a scene in the middle of the film when her car breaks down in the middle of the Scottish highlands and we see from behind her shoulders shake as the frustrations of the aftermath of Diana's death briefly overcome her. But the rest of the time she's stoic, albeit increasingly angered by Blair's attempts to steer the Royals away from protocol for their own sake. She is the solid centre around which everyone else revolves.
Apart from Sheen the other great performances are James Cromwell as Prince Philip and Alex Jennings as Prince Charles. Given that most of the genuine articles appearances in real life tend to tip into self-parody anyway Cromwell and Jennings outshine Mirren by not trying to make their parts direct imitations of what we 'know' the Princes to be like.
Peter Morgan's script is superb and deserves more acclaim than it's been getting. He treats the Royal Family with a light touch, so even when Philip is testily arguing about exactly why there is no flag flying at Buckingham Palace it makes perfect sense of the protocol rather than seeming ridiculous. And the sparing use of clips of Diana throughout the week help to emphasise the pressure on the Family, even if they don't really recognise or understand that it exists until it's almost too late. I rather expected that when the Queen and Prince Philip finally agreed to return to London we'd get some terribly staged scene of 'commoners' no longer willing to tip the knee to the Queen until she made some attempt to apologise for her behaviour but the script also avoids that trap, as just her presence then seems to make up for her distance before.
In a telling scene at the end the Queen exposes that this film is about Blair, not her, warning him in one of their weekly meetings that one day the people will turn on him, and question whether he should stay in the job, as they briefly did with her. There's no mention made that when the Queen's jubilee came around several years later , or the death of the Queen Mum, any fears for a Republican revolution in the immediate future were shown to be baseless.
I wonder how long we'll have to wait until Frears and Morgan give us their third film about Blair's great love affair with George Bush?
And so we have The Queen. I don't understand why Helen Mirren is getting so much acclaim for her role as Liz Two. The film is largely a sequel to The Deal , a television drama of a few years ago about the careers of Blair and Brown up to the former's becoming the leader of the Labour party in the mid-nineties. The film opens on the day of the General Election in 1997, the Queen sitting for a portrait while Blair goes to vote. Michael Sheen reprises his role as Tony Blair and it's really his story, from his first meeting with the Queen when she asks him to form and lead a Government after his success in winning the election, through the long week after the death of Diana and his struggles to stop the Royal Family from letting tradition march it to self-destruction. Helen Mirren does not give a great performance as her role gives her no opportunity to show what she's capable, save perhaps a scene in the middle of the film when her car breaks down in the middle of the Scottish highlands and we see from behind her shoulders shake as the frustrations of the aftermath of Diana's death briefly overcome her. But the rest of the time she's stoic, albeit increasingly angered by Blair's attempts to steer the Royals away from protocol for their own sake. She is the solid centre around which everyone else revolves.
Apart from Sheen the other great performances are James Cromwell as Prince Philip and Alex Jennings as Prince Charles. Given that most of the genuine articles appearances in real life tend to tip into self-parody anyway Cromwell and Jennings outshine Mirren by not trying to make their parts direct imitations of what we 'know' the Princes to be like.
Peter Morgan's script is superb and deserves more acclaim than it's been getting. He treats the Royal Family with a light touch, so even when Philip is testily arguing about exactly why there is no flag flying at Buckingham Palace it makes perfect sense of the protocol rather than seeming ridiculous. And the sparing use of clips of Diana throughout the week help to emphasise the pressure on the Family, even if they don't really recognise or understand that it exists until it's almost too late. I rather expected that when the Queen and Prince Philip finally agreed to return to London we'd get some terribly staged scene of 'commoners' no longer willing to tip the knee to the Queen until she made some attempt to apologise for her behaviour but the script also avoids that trap, as just her presence then seems to make up for her distance before.
In a telling scene at the end the Queen exposes that this film is about Blair, not her, warning him in one of their weekly meetings that one day the people will turn on him, and question whether he should stay in the job, as they briefly did with her. There's no mention made that when the Queen's jubilee came around several years later , or the death of the Queen Mum, any fears for a Republican revolution in the immediate future were shown to be baseless.
I wonder how long we'll have to wait until Frears and Morgan give us their third film about Blair's great love affair with George Bush?
Labels: actors, British Royal Family, Government, Labour, movies, Royal Family, Tony Blair, United Kingdom
