The Queen (DVD)

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TITLE: The Queen

CAST: Helen Mirren, Michael Sheen, James Cromwell, Alex Jennings, Helen McCrory, Sylvia Syms, Roger Allam

DIRECTOR: Stephen Frears

SCREENWRITER: Peter Morgan

RATING: PG

AVALABILITY: The Queen is available on DVD from Amazon.co.uk for £8.98. Please note this review is of the film only.
...we were when we heard the news that Princess Diana was dead. I was 15, and had just woken up on the Sunday morning to get dressed for choir practice before the morning service, when my younger brother told me that Diana had died in a car crash in Paris. I didn't believe him - while Diana didn't mean as much to me (my mind being filled with flirtation, pimples, and the appropriate skirt length) as to other people, I found the idea upsetting, and absurd. ... more

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TITLE: The Queen

CAST: Helen Mirren, Michael Sheen, James Cromwell, Alex Jennings, Helen McCrory, Sylvia Syms, Roger Allam

DIRECTOR: Stephen Frears

SCREENWRITER: Peter Morgan

RATING: PG

AVALABILITY: The Queen is available on DVD from Amazon.co.uk for £8.98. Please note this review is of the film only.

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I ntroduction
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Most of us probably remember where we were when we heard the news that Princess Diana was dead. I was 15, and had just woken up on the Sunday morning to get dressed for choir practice before the morning service, when my younger brother told me that Diana had died in a car crash in Paris. I didn't believe him - while Diana didn't mean as much to me (my mind being filled with flirtation, pimples, and the appropriate skirt length) as to other people, I found the idea upsetting, and absurd.

I remember watching in shock as the news , which never seemed to be off that day , confirmed that my brother was indeed telling the truth, and struggling at church as , in a state of disbelief, the choir and the music director began practice early in order to include appropriate music.

I remember the streets being silent - even in Nottingham, on the day of her funeral , as flowers piled up around the council house in the Old Market Square - and it was here that people who weren't at home watching on TV gathered to watch the events on big screen TV's. Complete strangers sat cross legged on the floor, crying together over someone the larger percentage of them had never met.

This week marked the 10th anniversary of Princess Diana's death in a car accident in Paris. As part of the week of programmers on Diana's life, and the event's following her death, ITV premiered this film at 9pm, on Sunday September the 2nd, which seems appropriate as this film focuses on the Queen's behavior during the events of that time, and the public's reaction.

I've seen the film before at the cinema , and am writing this review while watching it for the second time.

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L adies and Gentlemen - Her Majesty, HRH Queen Elizabeth II.
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This film focuses on the events from the time Tony Blair was elected to Prime Minister, and continues to portray events around the time of Princess Diana's death, and the effect those events had on politicians, the royal family, and the public. There are no real plot spoilers here - the beginning and the ending are already known.

When Princess Diana died, the public were united in a mass outpouring of grief which had never been seen on such a scale before. Poems and floral tributes carpeted the streets outside Kensington Palace, and other buildings in other cities. The public blamed everyone- the Paparazzi, the driver of the car, and eventually turned suspicious eyes onto the royal family. Everyone was on Diana's side, and almost everyone thought the royal family had, if not contributed to her death, contributed in some part to her unhappiness.

The royal family was portrayed by the press of being inhuman and cold in their reaction to her death, and HRH Queen Elizabeth II came in for the harshest criticism of all.

This film allows us a look at the situation from another angle - after all, there are two sides to every story, and the film offers up several new viewpoints to consider, and helps to balance the situation somewhat, and may in fact change your view of certain people.

However, it is important to point out that although this film is based on the death of princess Diana, a factual event, a lot of the film dialogue is based on word-of-mouth, and speculation. The Queen herself has never said a great deal about her feelings on the matter, and until recently the two princes, William and Harry, had also been quiet.

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A Right Royal Performance
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Majestic is the only word to describe Helen Mirren's performance as the queen. Bearing a startling physical resemblance after the application of wig and makeup, she manages all at once to portray several emotions - grief, anger, loneliness, sadness, and pride. She has a few humorous lines in the film which make her seem a warm character, and she really does come across as regal, dignified, proud - and yet human, warm, and lonely, and Mirren rightly collected a multitude of awards for this film.

Michael Sheen was excellent as Tony Blair, the newly appointed prime minister, and the youngest PM in over a century. It's a role he has performed before, and he captures both the arrogance of youth, enthusiasm, and shows a sympathetic side, and his portrayal gave me a new respect for Tony Blair - He may have made many mistakes, but by anyone's estimate, such a large scale event as this only a couple of months after his appointment to office must have been extremely difficult and challenging to handle.

Helen McCrory as pm's wife Cherie Blair was something of a revelation. Caustic, outspoken, and sometimes downright nasty in the comments she makes about the royal family, she nevertheless provides balance for a film that might otherwise lean towards the over sympathetic side of things.

Large parts of the film are taken from real life footage; it includes scenes taken from several news broadcast's. as well as several of Diana's real press conferences, scenes from outside Buckingham Palace , including interviews with members of the public, scenes of the sea of flowers, and scenes from the funeral itself. Therefore, there are many unacknowledged performances, both from Princess Diana, various newsreaders, and a host of celebrities including Elton John, Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, and others. The most moving of the scenes included for me, were a couple of excerpts from speeches made by Diana's brother, the Earl Spencer, which did reduce me to tears with their honesty , as one of the few moments in the film that involved someone who actually knew Princess Di.

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Pro duction
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T he quality of this production is excellent - stunning locations, the majority filmed in England but some scenes from Paris. In particular, a lot of the countryside was stunning, and added an element of beauty to the film.

One very well handled scene for me was the scene in which Princess Diana was followed by the paparazzi from her Paris hotel, which was handled in such a way as to be quite scary and menacing without at any point showing anything gory- no crash scenes, no mangled vehicles, and yet the full gravity of the situation came across.

Another well handled moment for me was the fast flickering through news stories in the weeks before her death, an ever changing array of news broadcasters passing comment on every aspect of her life, which showed just how intense media and public interest was in her, and how little privacy she actually had.

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Ac curacy and Believability
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There is no way of confidently knowing exactly how accurate Peter Morgan's script for this film is , as no one knows for certain what happened in those palace halls following Diana's death. The script is largely pure conjecture, lent a degree of accuracy by the clever usage of documentary and news footage taken at the time.

'The Queen' is not as much a documentary as a drama based on a tragedy that was both public, due to media attention, and private. The royal family was quiet at the time, and I feel they had every right to be. While the conversations used in this film were guesswork, I believe that many of them may be very near the mark, and they certainly add balance and logic to a previously one sided story.
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So undtrack
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The original score and songs were composed by Alexandre Desplat., although the soundtrack also features some recognizable music - short excerpts of 'Heaven must be missing an angel' and Faure's 'Libera Me' requiem .

Plenty of traditional sounding Scottish highland music also featured, adding an extra level of authenticity to those scenes where the family was at Balmoral.

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Memorable Quotes
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Prince Philip: Sleeping in the streets and pulling out their hair for someone they never knew. And they think we're mad!

HM Queen Elizabeth II: Have we shown you how to start a nuclear war yet?
Tony Blair: Er no.
HM Queen Elizabeth II: First thing we do apparently, and then we take away your passport and spend the rest of our time sending you around the world.
Tony Blair: You obviously know my job better than I do
HM Queen Elizabeth II: Yes well, you are my tenth Prime Minister Mr. Blair. My first of course was Winston Churchill; he sat in your chair in a frock coat and top hat. And he was kind enough to give a shy young girl like me quite an education.
Tony Blair: I would imagine.

HM The Queen Mother: You must show your strength. Reassert your authority. You sit on the most powerful throne in Europe, head of an unbroken line that goes back more than a thousand years. Do you think any of your predecessors would have dropped everything and gone up to London because a bunch of hysterics carrying candles needed help with their grief? Huh! As for that silly Mr. Blair with his Cheshire Cat grin...

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More Thoughts.
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I enjoyed this film very much, it challenged a lot of the views I previously had on the matter, and in particular made me feel a great deal more sympathy for the Queen. However accurate or inaccurate the dialogue may have been, it forced me to look at the situation from not just one, but several alternative points of view - firstly the Queens natural reaction to look after the needs of her grandsons, and to a lesser degree Prince Charles, would certainly have been a factor in the decisions she made, whether right or wrong.

Secondly, the public outpouring of grief was something that had never been seen before in England, and would certainly have been a shock to the Queen, whose own father was buried in less grand circumstances. Times and feeling change, and perhaps like many of the older generation, she found it hard to understand the feeling of the people at the loss of a woman they had come to regard as their princess. In one particular line, the Queen expresses the sentiment that in her younger days, grief was kept under wraps, 'Duty before Self' was how she explained her upbringing.

I can't help feeling now that the queen is not the cold hearted woman the press made her out to be, but was instead an ordinary, elderly woman struggling against public criticism and private isolation to perform an extraordinary role for which she was born, and did not choose herself. And I can't help feeling that the amount of bullying and abuse she received from the press and the public must have been isolating and utterly disheartening.

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Conclusion
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I found this film both engaging, and yet at times challenging. While the inclusion of news footage added authenticity to the film, it was at times quite distressing to see members of the public so grief stricken. However, I like a film that makes me question whether I might actually be wrong in my judgments, and this film certainly made me do that.

While the dialogue in the film is based on a lot of guesswork, there's no denying that the public and the press did persecute Princess Diana, allowing her no privacy, and in the aftermath of her death transferred a lot of that energy into apportioning blame, a lot, whether rightly or wrongly, directed at the Queen. There is no right or wrong way to grieve, and I feel the media, and the public, were too harsh in our judgment of her, a view that has largely come about through this film forcing me to consider alternative viewpoints on the situation.

I'd certainly recommend this film to anyone - both as an interesting film to watch, but also as a sensitive and engaging portrayal of events that for, whatever reason, remain stuck in our minds ten years after the occurred, and will probably continue to do so for some time to come.

Thank you for reading; I'll leave you with a quote from Earl Spencer's speech, which was shown in the film.

"I would like to end by thanking God for the small mercies he has shown us at this dreadful time. For taking Diana at her most beautiful and radiant and when she had joy in her private life. Above all we give thanks for the life of a woman I am so proud to be able to call my sister, the unique, the complex, the extraordinary and irreplaceable Diana whose beauty, both internal and external, will never be extinguished from our minds."
Earl Charles Spencer, 6th September, 1997 

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