THE QUEEN (Stephen Frears, 2006)
In the United States, the British Royal Family is viewed (as far as I can tell) as a group of the richest celebrities in the world, nothing more, nothing less. Their political power is nonexistent, their public face merely fodder for the vicious tabloid culture that passes for mainstream journalism in England (I'm looking at you, Daily Mail). To create a film in which Queen Elizabeth II is not only politically intelligent but also a human being might be the most radically audacious thing Stephen Frears and Peter Morgan have done with The Queen. Helen Mirren is (quite rightly) sucking up all the accolades for this bizarrely complex work, but as insight into the British political machine as a whole, it may have no peer.
The aforementioned complexity derives from not allowing the audience to derive an ideology from the film. We find Elizabeth frustratingly parochial in her refusal to acknowledge the death of Princess Diana or make any sort of gesture to the people she purports to lead. At the same time, the public theater that characterizes the mourning of the British people leaves a bad taste in one's mouth; they grieve for a person they only know through photographs and news stories. What right have they to a public funeral, or to condemn the queen for not doing anything? Is it Elizabeth's responsibility to step up to the microphone for a woman that isn't even a member of her family anymore? Furthermore, isn't it actually the appropriate thing to do to allow William and Harry (interestingly never directly appearing in the film) to privately grieve for their dead mother?
But at the end of the day, the film is not about the debate of how people should grieve, or even the moral correctness of Elizabeth's actions. It's about the very nature of the British people. The man who defined what is currently imagined by the world as the "British spirit," Winston Churchill, is mentioned by Elizabeth at the beginning of the film as a way of intimidating her new PM, Tony Blair (Michael Sheen). Churchill's image of "Britishness"--steely in the face of adversity, quietly dignified, emotionally reserved--is a social construct shaped by Britain in the first half of the 20th Century, a construct Elizabeth has built her whole life around. What she has failed to notice is that in the second half, the British spirit she knew has almost completely vanished. Blair, Elizabeth's symbol for the new British psychology, is by no means a royalist, but is more wise about the British temperament than the Windsors or even his staunchly anti-monarchist wife (Helen McCrory) or his staff.
The key moments that reveal both Blair and Elizabeth to be more politically complex than anyone else are a debate Blair has with his wife and Elizabeth stuck in the middle of a stream in north Scotland. Blair tells his wife that despite the anti-monarchist feeling in Britain, people still wouldn't tolerate constitutional expulsion of the royal family. Deep down inside, they still need the symbol of the all-encompassing ruler, the mother/father of an entire nation. Blair knows that he needs the queen as that figure just as much as she needs him, even if it is he that ultimately controls the government. Similarly, Elizabeth finds herself stuck in a stream, alone. Suddenly, she begins to weep. Unable to help herself, she understands that Britain is not the Britain she has believed it to be. She is vulnerable, human; the mask has cracked. She realizes that while she doesn't like it one bit, she must concede to Blair in order to save herself and her family.
Peter Morgan, the screenwriter, allegedly has monarchist/Tory sympathies, and is no fan of Blair, but that doesn't stop his film from not allowing any heroes or villains to emerge. We are not allowed the easy answers to what the British people truly need or want. And thanks to Mirren's ingenious performance, (but then again, what Mirren performance isn't?) we are left seeing that, no matter how laughable the British Crown is to most of the world, the symbiosis of power runs incredibly deep.
No comments:
Post a Comment