Won a oscar with its excellency along with 56 wins & 44 nominations. The Queen is indeed a remarkable achievement for anybody to watch it. Its a compelling and tragic tale, retelling On the 1st of September 1997, the world discovered a tragedy. This film is based on Princess Diana's death and its heartbreaking to watch
Director Steven Frears recreates a week of mouring of Princess Diana and its absolutely intelligent and brilliant at recreating this. The presentation of Princess Diana is artfully done in news snippets and archive footage, which brilliantly demonstrates the high impact her being had on people. The design of The Queen's home and her surroundings are convincing without being overly showy, and the Alexandre Desplat score is by turns dark, sad, and grand, perfectly summarizing the mindset of those involved.
Director Frears' previous work is The Deal, Dirty Pretty Things and Liam didn't won a oscar but this movie portrayal of the Queen does. Frears recreated the world of what happens in 1997, and the formula he is doing is brilliant and smart. Its indeed a remarkable masterpiece and its very compelling and tragic. The turnoil changed when, Diana the 'People's Princess' has died in a car accident in Paris. The Queen (Mirren) and her family decide that for the best, they should remain hidden behind the closed doors of Balmoral Castle. The heartbroken public do not understand and request that the Queen confronts her people. This also puts pressure on newly elected Tony Blair (Sheen), who constantly tries to convince the monarchy to address the public. But the film belongs to Helen Mirren, who takes on of her most challenging roles and showing us that behind the Queen lay a person, and one with feelings. In her role as the reigning lady, she is the epitome of suppressed disappointment and hurt. The Queen chose not to make a parade of her feelings in response to Diana's death, and, though the nation hated her for it, we learn here that it is not because she did not care, but because she honestly thought it the right thing to do.
As a young and newly elected Tony Blair with big aspirations and an even bigger grin, Michael Sheen is freakishly good as the Prime Minister. His performance shows a likable side of the prime minister in his refusal to side with the public over the denouncement of The Queen for her actions, and his attempts to make The Queen limit the damage that she has made is the basis for a very insightful story.
The Queen as seen here and imagined with enthusiasm by Morgan is not as witty as Alan Bennett's Queen, in her last on screen recreation, in A Question of Attribution (directed by John Schlesinger, 1992), nor does the estimable Ms. Mirren (who's nonetheless very fine) have the buoyancy of Prunella Scales in Schlesinger's film. But she is witheringly cold toward Tony Blair, all foolish smiles on his first official visit to the Palace. (Blair's played by Michael Sheen, who's experienced at this game.) As Peter Bradshaw wrote in The Guardian, "Mirren's Queen meets him with the unreadable smile of a chess grandmaster, facing a nervous tyro. She begins by reminding him that she has worked with 10 prime ministers, beginning with Winston Churchill, 'sitting where you are now'. As put-downs go, that's like pulling a lever and watching a chandelier fall on your opponent's head." Fully recognizing the crucial importance of the British monarchy, this film is tartly reserved about both sides of the game. The royal family don't like "call me Tony." And Blair's wife Cherie is a bit ungainly in her blatantly anti-monarchy attitudes. But when Blair sees how Elizabeth's coldness and invisibility is angering the fans of Dady Di – the media queen, the "People's Princess" -- alienating her own subjects en masse, he steps in and persuades them to leave Balmoral and look at the thousands of flowers for Di piled in front of the Palance with their humiliating notes; then deliver a "tribute" to Di on TV. The formal grandeur of the film inherent in its subject matter – the Prime Minister and the royal family – is offset by its ironies and by the intimacy of the tennis match that develops in communications back and forth by telephone.
This movie is ultimately kind to Blair and to the Queen. It makes us feel sorry for Elizabeth, whom Blair comes to defend (against some of his cockier associates, not to mention his wife) with ardor. In Peter Morgan's second imagined interview with Blair the Queen coolly observes that he confuses "humility" with "humiliation" (he hasn't seen the nasty notes on the bunches of flowers for Diana); and she sees his kindness as merely due to seeing that what has happened to her could happen to him as quickly. As for Blair, the Brits may have little use for him now, but the filmmakers acted out of the belief that this week when he averted disaster on behalf of the monarchy was his "finest hour." Frears has had a varied career, with high points second to few, concentrated in the decade of the Eighties after he came off doing a lot of television. These finest hours include My Beautiful Laundrette, Prick Up Your Ears, Dangerous Liaisons, and The Grifters. For a while there it looked like he could do anything, then more as if he would; but he's admirably willing to try new, as well as dirty, pretty, things, The Queen is dignified, but contemporary. It's bustling and grand. Loud music and vivid performances help. Mirren's Elizabeth is more of the Queen and less of the Queen than Prulella Scales' briefer performance. Bennett's Queen was very clever. Morgan's is sad and noble. The Queen, which is dignified, but contemporary, shows where the Brits are now, and the effect of Lady Di. QEII, like QEI and Victoria before her, has had an extraordinarily long and successful reign, half a century (obviously Mirren is younger than the actual Queen.) But with these events, with this crucial week, the days of her generation essentially ended.
There's a symbolic fourteen-point stag at Balmoral the men are interested in. James Cromwell's brusque, lordly Prince Philip will do nothing but take the boys hunting, to get them outside. In the end a corporate banker kills the stag on a neighbor's property, and only Elizabeth sees it, when she's stranded in a jeep she's driven into the mud, and crying.
For all its ceremony and noise, loneliness and wit, mostly The Queen simply tells a story, the new story of English royalty at the end of the twentieth century. It was a story worth telling, and it's told well. Overall, The Queen is really a remarkable classic that will make you laugh, cry and mourn at its archive footage and intelligent dialogue. Frears recration and retelling of tragic turnoil of September 1997 really stands out to everyone. It also creates a new meaning to our hearts and tells us what is happening behind the palace and her mind. The ending is really great and it defiantely deserves a Oscar for its portrayal of the Queen. This film will definately will be in our hearts and minds. Its just a beatiful, witty, touching and engrossing of The Queen. Historic buffs and people wanting to purchase this movie, absolutely should, its just a great drama realistic story, and its compelling and tragic at times. The archive footage of Princess Diana's death is really heartbreaking and sad to see, along with old footage of the news back then. I really enjoy this movie alot, you might agree me with this. 9.2/10
