Word: elizabeth
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...That, anyway, is the proposition of The Queen, an immensely entertaining and seemingly acute chronicle of the week Diana died, as dramatized through the very different reactions of stern, befogged Elizabeth II (Helen Mirren) and of Prime Minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen), who was keenly attuned to public sentiment and how to manipulate it. The film, written by Peter Morton and directed by Stephen Frears (best known for Dangerous Liaisons), won the screenplay and actress prizes at Venice this month. Friday The Queen helps launch the 44th New York Film Festival before opening in selected cities...
...movie's patina of textual and textural accuracy comes from voluminous research by the BBC Films team, including interviews with Windsor insiders, a chatty crowd. Elizabeth might be expected to run a tight ship with tight lips; but because royal scandal is a marketable commodity and the tabloid press voracious and rapacious, Buckingham Palace regularly springs more leaks than the Titanic. So you may take it as gossip gospel that Princess Margaret made the ungenerous observation quoted in the film that Diana was even "more irritating dead than alive." Morton also did a lot of asking around, and people answered...
...however accurate the portrait of the royals in The Queen, the first impression the movie gives is one of cool, devastating satire. Or perhaps Elizabeth and her family really are as drab as the film paints them! They don't aspire to glamour; they renounce it. Cloistered at Balmoral, knitting and nattering in their plain wool sweaters, caring more for their pets than for their children, the Royal Family seems a parody of the pettiness and insularity of the English middle class. They might be the extended clan of Wallace and Gromit or cousins of Mrs. Proposition and Mrs. Conclusion...
...That's wishful thinking. Elizabeth has always struck me as a crabby soul. Her job is, essentially, to smile in public, yet she's never been good at it. The grin seems more a grimace, as if she grudges the effort it takes to move those facial muscles. If warmth and beauty are requisites of regality, she's flunked the test. Perhaps because of the coldness I sense in Elizabeth, I've often felt a sympathy for Charles, whom I'm guessing didn't get a lot of it at home. He works so hard at the game of ingratiation...
...identify the body then suggest he get there not on the royal jet but by connecting commercial flights. When the others attack Diana's skills as a mother, Charles makes pointed remarks about the love she showered on her two sons, unlike his own mother. (Now, now, Corliss, give Elizabeth her due: she has trained her dogs beautifully, perhaps because she's shown them more attention and affection...