�The Queen�: sympathetic, brilliant look at Elizabeth II - Columns

By Jane Holahan

Updated Feb 19, 2007 15:40

The woman lost her head because of it.

Now comes �The Queen,� about Queen Elizabeth II, who is about as different from Marie Antoinette as it�s possible to be and still be a queen.

But Elizabeth almost lost her head too (metaphorically speaking) when she utterly failed to understand how deeply her people grieved over the death of Diana, her ex � and not very well-liked by the royals � daughter-in-law.

It seems to be the year of regals in the movie world, and I�m happy to report that �The Queen� is, appropriately enough, playing at the Regal Cinemas. It�s also at the Allen in Annville and the Midtown in Harrisburg, where I watched it last week.

�The Queen� is the best movie I�ve seen this year. Wry, poignant and wonderfully entertaining, it tells the story of the week after Diana was killed in a car accident in Paris in 1997.

The royal family thought, since Diana was ex-royalty, that the period of mourning and her funeral would be private. That�s what protocol called for.

The people rebelled. They wanted a loud, weepy and official mourning period and funeral. And they wanted the queen and the royal family to cry and mourn publicly too.

They loved Diana, deemed �The People�s Princess� by the savvy new prime minister, Tony Blair.

The movie brilliantly explores just how out of touch Elizabeth and her family had become, yet how rooted in duty and protocol they were.

It is a complex yet sympathetic portrait of the queen, played with heart, soul and steely precision by Helen Mirren.

Elizabeth may well be one of the richest people in England (she�s worth about $500 million), but in the movie she leads a relatively modest life, more interested in horses, dogs and beat-up old Range Rovers than she is glitz and glamour.

Mirren captures a woman who never complains about her duties and obligations and fully accepts them. You�ve got to give the woman credit.

Yet raised in such utter privilege and pomp, she seems rather silly and out of place in a world in which the monarchy is little more than a relic of the past.

Mirren�s performance is so brilliant (I see an Oscar in Mirren�s future) because she�s made a complete, fully rounded character out of a woman we are all familiar with yet don�t know at all.

Everyone is terrific in �The Queen,� including Michael Sheen as Blair; Helen McCrory as his free-spirited wife, Cherie; Alex Jennings as the befuddled but sympathetic Charles; James Cromwell as the icy Prince Philip; and Sylvia Sims as the Queen Mum, whose real personality wasn�t nearly as sweet as her public persona.

Director Stephen Frears is masterful in creating a real world. He�s got to be, because so many of us in the audience remember those events so vividly.

It�s hard to compare �The Queen� to �Marie Antoinette,� though I think they are both sympathetic portraits of misunderstood women.

Clearly, �The Queen� is a far superior movie because we not only get to understand the queen, we realize just how human she is, even if she works hard to hide it from her subjects.

�Marie Antoinette� (which is playing at the new Penn Cinemas, by the way) never tries very hard to get into the young royal�s doomed head. The film just looks at all the pretty wigs and shoes.

Talkback on LancasterOnline

Welcome to the new TalkBack on LancasterOnline. Please use the comment box below to share your opinion on this article. If you would prefer to use the previous TalkBack forums instead, please use this link.