The Queen

The Queen (2006) dramatizes a domestic and political conflict within the British Royal family and government during the days following the death of Princess Diana. Tony Blaire has just been elected to the position of Prime Minister from the Labor party. His politics are progressive and his staff talks a lot about modernization and revolution and ending the monarchy. The Royal Family is as dour and out of touch as ever. The isolation in which they live may be self-willed, but it is a source of their incomprehension about modern England and its people. Elizabeth at one point assures Tony Blair that no one understands the British people as well as she does, but the film is her lesson in the realities that she does not understand.

The basic conflict concerns how the Royal Family should react to Diana's death. Elizabeth announces that her family will make no public statements about the death and that there will be a private funeral—she assures Tony Blair that this is what Diana's family wants. Privately, Elizabeth and her kin see Diana's death as another way their former in-law has embarrassed and inconvenienced them. They make no public announcements, stay at their estate to the north of London, and seem wholly unaware of the national waves of mourning that occur in response to Diana's passing. Elizabeth believes the British people will quickly quiet down and mourn for a few weeks in private. She is shocked when she discovers that her family's lack of a response has angered the British people. She realizes that she has become an object of hatred. Tony Blair is not a supporter of the monarchy, but over the course of the week leading to Diana's funeral he finds himself in the position of having to be concerned for the Royal Family's welfare and even for the monarchy's survival.

Gradually Blair and Elizabeth forge a cautious alliance. By speaking for the grief of the British people, Blair makes the statements that the people want to hear and enhances his popularity as the new prime minister. The film leaves ambiguous the issue of whether he knows that his statements are strengthening his own political position, or whether he is consciously seizing the moment to improve his own political position. Even his wife is surprised by his sympathy for the royals. Gradually, through repeated phone calls to Elizabeth, he convinces her that the lack of response from the royal family is damaging the monarchy. This is what convinces Elizabeth—her dawning awareness that times have changed, that things are not as she thought they were in Britain, that the people of England may well hate her, and that she must take steps to protect the monarchy. What she does is clearly motivated by self-interest and a desire to preserve her political position, though at the same time she acts out of genuine concern for the monarchy and for her country. We are told that she believes her position as Queen is the result of divine will. She takes her position seriously. At one point, while she is trailing her husband and grandsons, who are out hunting, the truck she is driving breaks down in the middle of a shallow stream and she waits to be rescued. She sees the huge stag that her husband and grandsons are tracking. It is a beautiful and impressive animal, and from her reaction it is clear that she sees the animal, in a sense, as a symbol of herself, of the monarchy, hunted and besieged.

The Royal Family has plenty of internal conflict. Prince Philip is basically a blubbering and flummoxed loose appendage. He reacts with outrage to everything that happens. To console his grandsons in the days after their mother's death, he takes them hunting. The doddering Queen Mother is a royal version of Aunt Bea from the Andy Griffith Show. Only Charles appears to have some sense of the modern world, yet he seems fearful of his mother, sometimes expressing his opinions to her but never trying to convince her to change her mind. His ways of handling matters are indirect: when he wants to tell Tony Blair that he agrees with his point of view, he does so through an intermediary. When he wants to upbraid his mother for her lack of parenting skills, he does so by telling her what a good mother Diana was (Elizabeth does get the point). Even though Charles thinks his family should travel to London to pay respects to Diana and talk to the mourning crowds, his lack of will prevents him from going until Elizabeth approves the idea. Her misapprehensions about England and its people appear to be a crucial factor in her decision late in the film to take the advice of Tony Blair.

Blair, in his most important call to Elizabeth, tells her that he feels it his constitutional responsibility to inform her that her actions (or lack thereof) have endangered the monarchy.

As a result of the events dramatized in the film, Blair comes to a new respect for the monarchy, while Elizabeth comes to a begrudging recognition of how she must function in a government that is, despite its royal family, democratic in form. The film argues for the monarchy without making clear its importance or value, though it also argues for a monarchy that is part of rather than separate from the modern world.

The Queen is a political domestic melodrama, though the stakes are greater than they usually prove to be in such films. It is also a character study, of the Royal Family in general, but of Elizabeth in particular, and of Tony Blair to a lesser extent. Helen Mirren is excellent in her role as Elizabeth. Other actors portraying various members of the Royal Family are effective too, but Mirren stands out. The casting agent deserves praise for finding actors fwho resemble in a general way the members of the Royal Family without possessing their remarkable ugliness. Michael Sheen is effective as Tony Blair, though somewhat more sallow and seedy than Blair. Stephen Frears, who in The Grifters and Hero reflected a fundamental pessimism about human nature, shows a nuanced talent for bringing out the essential elements of his characters. His greatest achievement may have been in allowing Helen Mirren to develop her role. She makes Elizabeth into a far more interesting and intelligent character than her public image suggests that she really is, and in this Mirren may have done the Queen a favor that she deserved, or did not deserve. Who knows?

Who knows what Elizabeth thought of this film, or even if she ever saw it, but for the 97 minutes that comprise this film Mirren fully and convincingly occupies her character in such a way that you forget Helen Mirren is there.