The Queen

Average customer rating: 4.5

Why?
4.5 Stars is about right
Good Perspective
Fantastic peek behind Buckingham Palace's doors...
A CLOSE CALL

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The Queen
Starring: Helen Mirren , Michael Sheen , James Cromwell , Sylvia Syms , and Alex Jennings
Director: Stephen Frears
Manufacturer: Miramax
Product Group: DVD
Binding: DVD
ASIN: B00005JPAO
2007-04-24

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| Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

Allam, Roger

Cromwell, James

McMullan, Tim

Mirren, Helen

Syms, Sylvia

Frears, Stephen

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Amazon.com

Helen Mirren reigns supreme in <I>The Queen</I>, a witty and ingenious look at a moment that rocked the house of Windsor: the week that followed the sudden death of Princess Diana in 1997. Diana's death came at just the same time that Prime Minister Tony Blair (played by the bright Michael Sheen) was settling into his new government--and trying to figure out the delicate relationship between 10 Downing Street and Queen Elizabeth II (Mirren). A large portion of the British population was trying to figure out the Windsors that week, as Elizabeth remained stiff-upper-lip and largely mum about the death of the beloved princess. In Peter Morgan's skillful script, we watch as Blair grows increasingly impatient with the Royals, who are sequestered in their Scottish estate while the public demands some show of grief. Prince Philip (James Cromwell, in good form) clumsily decides to take Diana's sons hunting, while a sympathetically-treated Prince Charles (Alex Jennings) displays some frustration with his mother's eerie calm.

None of this conveys how funny the film is, or how deftly it flows from one scene to the next. Director Stephen Frears (<I>Dirty Pretty Things</I>) deserves great credit for that, and for the performances, and for the movie's marvelous sense of well-roundedness; you could see this movie and groan at the cluelessness of the Royals and their outmoded existence, or you might just sympathize with showing reserve in a world that values gross public displays of emotion. But either way, you'll marvel at Mirren, who makes the Queen far more alert and human than one might ever have imagined. <I>--Robert Horton</I>

<span class="h1"><strong>Beyond The Queen</strong></span> <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="4" cellpadding="4"> <tr align="center" valign="top" class="tiny"> <td width="33%"> <img src="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000FO0AHO.01.TZZZZZZZ.jpg" border="0">
The British are Coming! Kings & Queens on DVD</td> <td width="33%"> <img src=" http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0000AYJV5.01.TZZZZZZZ.jpg" border="0">
Helen Mirren Essential DVDs</td> <td width="33%"> <img src="http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000I0QJK2.01.TZZZZZZZ.jpg" border="0">
The Queen: Music From the Motion Picture by Alexandre Desplat</td> </tr> </table> </p> <span class="h1"><strong>Stills from <I>The Queen</I> (click for larger image)</strong></span> <table border="0" cellpadding="4" width="100%" cellspacing="4">

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Description

Winner of the Academy Award® for Best Actress, Dame Helen Mirren gives a spellbinding performance in THE QUEEN, the provocative story behind one of the most public tragedies of our time — the sudden death of Princess Diana. In the wake of Diana's death, the very private and tradition-bound Queen Elizabeth II (Mirren) finds herself in conflict with the new Prime Minister, the slickly modern and image-conscious Tony Blair. THE QUEEN, also starring Academy Award® Nominee James Cromwell (Best Supporting Actor, BABE, 1995), takes you inside the private chambers of the Royal Family and the British government for a captivating look at a vulnerable human being in her darkest hour, as a nation grieving for its People's Princess waits to see what its leaders will do. Suspenseful, heartfelt and riveting, it's a fascinating story you won't soon forget.

Customer Reviews:

Why?.......2007-06-13

Is there anybody out there who can explain the world-wide hysteria triggered by the death of "Lady Di?" A privileged royal bites the dust and millions fall to pieces? Which part of the human psyche yearns to cry in great crowds? Is it the hanky sharing? The flowers? The Elton John tributes? Its a mystery. But one thing is certain, we should quit it. If we manage to quell this impulse, and learn to blubber like infants in the privacy of our own homes, maybe we could hold our heads a little higher, and boring movies that debase the population would no longer be made.

Sure, What's-Her-Face does a fine job playing a grey old woman who stands around saying things, but is that enough? Actually, if you want to get political, "The Queen" is pure propaganda. Yet another film industry attempt to simultaneously humanize and glorify our magnificent leaders. Lets drop to our knees and thank The Almighty for providing sober and capable geezers to rule over us all!

4.5 Stars is about right.......2007-06-12

A beautifully produced reconstruction of events during the week following Diana Spencer's unexpected death: the public mourning, the Royal Family's cluelessness, and Tony Blair's attempts to curry favor with all involved. Helen Mirren deservedly won the 2006 Oscar for best performance by an actress, and the rest of the cast turns in creditable performances as well. I'd give this 4.5 stars if that were allowed.

Good Perspective.......2007-06-12

Found this story very interesting. It's perspective of the Royal Family was believable as was the hidden emotions of the Queen that struggled to surface. Good movie.

Fantastic peek behind Buckingham Palace's doors..........2007-06-12

This was a superb film. It was over before you were ready to have it end. I wanted to watch more to learn how the royals live and interact with the British Prime Minister.
Everyone acted fantastic....but the Tony Blair actor who appeared to resemble Mr. Bean to me. Its a compelling look at how the monarchy felt about Diana. I highly recommend this excellent film.

A CLOSE CALL.......2007-06-11

There are several themes to this excellent and most original and interesting film; but what it is about more than anything else is how political regimes and whole dynasties can be undone on account of a single error of judgment. It is only near the end that Her Majesty warns her prime minister that this will happen to him, and happen suddenly and without warning. It had nearly happened to her, he had been the saving of her on this occasion, and her dire prediction for him probably holds an uneasy message for herself too.

At the start the Queen is full of regal self-assurance, neatly putting her boyish and slightly nervous novice of a prime minister in his place by telling him he is sitting where Churchill once sat. In next to no time the positions are reversed, as Blair's acute political antennae tell him that HM is in imminent danger of losing her subjects' allegiance, something that would have been unimaginable only days previously, through trusting her own judgment and listening to the advice of her husband and her mother in respect of how to react to the death of Princess Diana. Throughout the crisis Blair is adroit and sure-footed, the monarch is made to realise bitterly from the newspapers how he has it right and she has been hopelessly at sea, but unlike her family counsellors she has the wit to swallow her pride and retrieve the situation before it slides beyond retrieval. This one incident could have undone a lifetime of unswerving dedication, universally acknowledged, to her country, and put the skids under the House of Windsor itself. Her warning to Blair is really made from a new sense of respect and a shocked realisation of how quickly and brutally the tables can turn. And how right she has been. This film does not make the matter explicit, but any viewer can sense the irony of Blair's own political fate. For years he seemed unable to put a foot wrong as far as the public were concerned, his luck was near-incredible (and his political nous was enormously greater than Churchill's); and then he blew it all with one foolish and ill-considered assertion in the Commons about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Just one mistake, when one is not sensing danger, is enough.

The depiction of the main players is brilliant, and I found it fascinating to guess just how accurate it may be. Leaks, rumours, gossip and memoirs certainly descend on the public these days like leaves in Vallombrosa, giving us some shaky basis for forming a judgment. In the nature of the case a prime minister has to make himself (or herself) familiar to a rightly suspicious electorate, but a monarch should always retain some mystique, and the other dramatis personae, even the heir to the throne, are only intermittently in the limelight. Inevitably and rightly the film's characterisation is creative, but it is coherent and convincing provided one does not mistake it for portraiture from life. The acting has been widely praised and I concur entirely. The atmosphere is beautifully touched in too, from the family life of the Blairs (and the Windsors) to the blokeish informality of the New Labour apparatchiks in Downing Street and above all the hushed flunkeyish reverence accorded to the Queen, cocooning her in the chrysalis that nearly devoured her.

I hope there is no possibility of a sequel, as a masterpiece like this should be left unique. Within days now Her Britannic Majesty will be welcoming a new prime minister whom she probably suspects of being a closet republican, as I suspect he is too. I shall be watching out all the same for one thing that this film says clearly through the lips of Cherie Blair, something to the effect that all Labour prime ministers finish up devoted to the Queen. Maybe it will be the same story with Brown, but I wonder how matters will stand once the monarch is no longer Elizabeth II. When that becomes the case the story of Princess Diana is likely to open a new chapter.

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