The Queen

Anyone interested in the role played by the Queen in Britain's constitutional monarchy will find this a fascinating film. It is, in addition, both beautifully acted - Helen Mirren must be in a shoo-in for an Oscar for her remarkable role as Her Maj - and wonderfully shot. In the British system the monarch has the duty to warn and encourage as well as be consulted, but in this film roles are extraordinarily reversed.

The action begins with the death of Diana in August 1997 and the story revolves around the reactions of the Royal Family to this event plus the role of new Prime Minister Tony Blair in urging upon them courses of action which they are not inclined, through their traditions and upbringing, to take. The Royals' initial reaction - cocooned at Balmorral - was to deploy the traditional stiff upper lip and play it by the protocol book.



Diana, who was not a popular member of 'The Firm', was not then technically a member of the Royal Family, as she had been relieved of her HRH as a result of the divorce. Consequently, the Royals argued, there was no requirement for a state funeral or to lower the flag to half-mast at Buckingham Palace. The Duke of Edinburgh - well played by James Cromwell, the rangy farmer from Babe - was convinced the boys needed to get out in the Scottish hills and stalk a deer in order to take their minds off things. Meanwhile the scenes of mass grief began accusingly to take place in London and the tabloid headlines to appear of a heartless, dysfunctional royal family. A crisis was emerging which arguably threatened the survival of the monarchy as an institution.

This is where Tony Blair - the second remarkable performance, this time by Michael Sheen - comes in as the mediator between the Royals and a grieving nation. His finely tuned politician's antennae have picked up that something is happening in the wake of Diana's death that the Royal Family - still locked in the repressed manners and feelings of the early 1900s - are unable to detect and to which they are wholly ill-equipped to react.

The Royal advisors, most of whom had little time for the histrionic Princess, seemed to be even more blind and insensitive. If this version of Blair's interventions is anywhere near accurate, he may well have saved the monarchy's bacon during this episode. Whether it was or is worth saving, is another matter entirely.

Writer Peter Morgan has not provided so much a plot; rather he has interpreted a signal event in British political and social life in a way which is wonderfully subtle and insightful about the Royals, about Blair, and about late twentieth century British society. Many of the scenes, for example where Tony and Cherie first meet the Queen, are exquisitely and wittily observed.

The Queen's eventual broadcast to the nation is a tour de force by Mirren. Good as the other actors are - Sheen, Cromwell, Helen McGrory as Cherie, Roger Allam as Robin Janvrin, Sylvia Syms as Queen Mother (yes, Sylvia Syms!) Alex Jennings as Prince Charles - Helen Mirren is transcendent as Elizabeth II just as she was as Elizabeth I. There is never a moment when you don't believe she is the Queen, so completely does she inhabit her character. And the triumph of the role and indeed of the film, is that while the royals shamefully do not rise to the occasion, we are able to understand and empathize with their failure.