GET OUT MORE........FILM REVIEW

21-06-2006

Screen writer Peter Morgan brought the Tony Blair/Gordon Brown relationship to life on Channel 4 and now steps up to the big screen for THE QUEEN, a drama-documentary about her majesty's relationship with Princess Di. Our man in the stalls is local movie producer Roger Shannon.

THE QUEEN

What a great film this is, one of the best UK productionsfor a while,and the highlight isHelen Mirren's majestic performance - worthy of an Oscar nomination. The initials say it all - HM as Her Majesty. Helen Mirren as HM. Overall, however, this is a real team effort, and that teamis the one that delivered so successfully the TV drama The Deal, which dealt with the infamous Blair - Brown meal at the Granita restaurant. So, reprising their roles are Stephen Frears, director; writer, Peter Morgan and Michael Sheen as Tony Blair.

THE QUEEN begins with Her Majesty waking up to the news of Blair as the freshly elected Prime Minister, but then moves forward to hone in on the immediate aftermath of Diana's death in Paris.

As Blair, Michael Sheen is excellent, all twitchy gestures, dark of hair and a youthfully uncreased face. But it's Helen Mirren who quite rightly and regally as Her Majesty reigns in this movie.

We've already seen her Elizabeth the First; her Queen Charlotte in The Madness Of King George,and in Prime Suspectshe's Queen DI !! But in this movie she tops the lot. In an uncanny transformation, Helen Mirren becomes the Queen - the gestures, the walk, the voice, the stroll with the corgis, her acidic put downs of Tony Blair.

She struts her Windsor stuff and against a backdrop of a gin-tippling Queen Mother (a great performance from Sylvia Sims), a nervously dithering Prince Charles and a loutish Prince Philip, Helen Mirren's The Queen is at root a respectful and very human rendition.

As the ghost of Diana weirds out the Windsor family, it's Her Majesty who bows to popular pressure and returns from their Scottish retreat to London to participate in the carnival of national mourning. The film intelligently, comically and movingly peels away some of the layers that have been wrapped around this most media encrusted of recent events, and catches the inner drama within.

The Royal Family also had to peel off some layers in the real time of the actual events, as they grappled with a newly modern era. The comedy,however, ultimately is mostly reserved for the political establishment emerging around Blair, and not the royal establishment, and for that, director Stephen Frears will be spared the treason of a gallows review, and receive the thumbs up of a deserved pardon.