The Queen
   ACast :
Helen Mirren, James Cromwell, Sylvia Syms, Michael Sheen

Director:
Stephen Frears

Rating: PG-13
for language

Running time:
97 minutes
   At first glance, The Queen might seem to be what used to be called a "docu-drama," a queasy-making hybrid of putative documentary fact and speculation performed by look-alike actors. But it's actually quite wonderful; delicious and full of subversive spirit, one of the year's best films and probably the means by which Helen Mirren obtains a Best Actress Oscar.
   Mirren's Queen Elizabeth II isn't the only glory here; Michael Sheen is utterly convincing as Tony Blair, and screenwriter Peter Morgan (The Last King of Scotland) has furnished a script that raises all sorts of nettling questions about the triangulated obligations of government, governed and ornamental monarch. What does it mean to have a queen in the age of celebrity when any commoner, by dint of luck or talent, can become the public's darling? What use have we for royalty when we've got K-Fed and Britney?
   One senses a bit of sentimentality for the old girl, who after all didn't choose to be born a royal Windsor, both in Morgan's screenplay and Stephen Frears' sure and understated direction. As for Mirren, she is Elizabeth, more concerned with the shallowness of curtsies and her duty than whether or not she's genuinely beloved or whether her son's ex, Diana, has usurped her place as the national object of affection and faith.
   Set primarily in the week in September 1997 after Diana Spencer's car crash death in Paris and the state funeral the royals begrudgingly accorded her, The Queen is a comedy of royal manners and a soap opera full of tone-deaf twits like James Cromwell's amusingly stupid Prince Philip -- the real one couldn't be such a ninny, could he? -- and the opportunistic Prince of Wales (Alex Jennings), who comes off as the one Windsor with a sense of the public's depth of feeling for Diana.
   It's immensely satisfying to think -- even if it's not really the case -- that the Blairs live in kid-friendly disarrangement at No. 10 Downing Street in a state of cozy clutter that's not too far removed from some households we've seen. Perhaps Cherie Blair (a marvelous Helen McCrory) is right when she detects sympathetic deference to the royals in her husband -- it's the Labour P.M.s who are most starstruck by pomp and circumstance -- but his concerns are largely pragmatic. "Will someone please save these people from themselves?" he whines, while fully realizing that's his job -- the monarchy is perilously close to toppling and he can't in good conscience stand aside and invite the chaos in.
   Yet there's something in Mirren's Elizabeth that argues she needs no saving. She's self-reliant, capable with cars and dogs -- Labs as well as her famous Corgis -- and susceptible to being stung by unkind judgments. When she finally surveys the mounds of flowers piled at the gates of the place in memory of Diana, she's wounded by the hurtful sentiments expressed on some of the cards and placards.
   It's there the movie moves from farce to revelation, where the monster gains our empathy, where we come to a place where we might weep for a queen.

This story was published Friday, November 17, 2006