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‘The Queen’ Tells How Elizabeth Dealt With Princess Diana’s Death
BY MAGGIE SCOTT
Not everyone loved Princess Diana. She was not universally cherished in what should have been a place of unqualified support, if not love. That place was the royal household of Windsor. Part of Diana’s tragic story of rejection by her “betters” is told in the fabulous new film, The Queen, by director Stephen Frears and writer Peter Morgan.
Elizabeth’s head if not her heart is “uneasy” in the words of Shakespeare, proudly and obtusely wearing the crown that symbolizes for her years of service to the British realm’s subjects. In 1987, the queen (Helen Mirren, with an uncanny resemblance fortified by an intuitive performance) is girding herself for the adjustment to a brand-new Prime Minister (nine others have served her since she was crowned).
The Labor Party’s Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) has won a landslide election. It has been no secret that Mrs. Blair, a barrister, is an anti-monarchist. And, rumor has it that Blair will run number 10 Downing Street on a more informal basis than his predecessor. With warning flags already flying, the queen is ill-prepared for what happens on Aug. 31.
With ill-concealed scorn, the queen asks, “What’s she done now?” when her sober personal secretary announces that there is grave news about the queen’s former daughter-in-law. Knowing that it is death, and horrific death at that, does not soften her majesty’s demeanor.
What is this loss to her? It’s a terrible blow to her grandsons, surely; but certainly no cause for fuss along the lines of using a royal jet to fly to Paris to recover the body.
Elizabeth’s detachment quickly morphs into cruelty, as she declares Diana “more annoying dead than alive,” when media coverage fixates on the explosion of grief. Her “instinct” is not to make a public statement, to reject the idea of a state funeral: “The less attention drawn to it, the better.”
Meanwhile, Blair is coping with what could be the first crisis of his administration and what ultimately becomes his “finest hour.” As the public begin clamoring for some response from the royal family, Blair begins the delicate task of persuading the queen to see what is at stake.
With her ideas of tradition and propriety under attack, Elizabeth insists she knows her people and what they need better than anyone. But it’s only a matter of time before Blair’s diplomatic pressure and his belief that there is “something ugly about bullying the queen” begin to erode her majesty’s certainties. An epiphany about the life Diana led as the media’s quarry and some painful reconsideration about the repudiation she suffered at her in-laws’ hands begin to sink in.
This portrait of an icon eating crow is intelligently and often times wittily presented in such a way that it is clear these essentially ordinary people acting under extraordinary circumstances like vindictive twits became preoccupied with what looks right than with what is right.
A Pathe Films production, Miramax Films release, rated PG-13 for language.
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