The Queen (or, We are quite amused)

Watching Helen Mirren as HRH Liz II is an eerie experience. She is that good. It is uncanny. And yet, the world that director Stephen Frears takes us into is so "behind doors" that we can have little understanding of how factual it really is.

And then Mirren makes it real. It is an amazing accomplishment of writing and performance that The Queen rings so true. In fact, there were very few, if any, moments during the film when I even thought to question its veracity.

Apparently the screenwriter spent a year on one of the royal estates slowly picking off the royal employees and grilling them for the facts. The result is an intimate portrait as the royals in their utter domesticity, drinking tea and squabbling. Their world, though recognisable, is run by rules from another era, and this forms the films driving conflict.

And the royals are up against some pretty stiff competition. The Blairs, in all their upper middle class glory are our grounded in reality champions of the people. Cheri spends her time ranting against the irrelevance of the royals while Tony makes excuses for them. What is our world coming to?

The Queen plays out rather like a freak show. Look at the funny royals, sonny! Yet their inability to see the world for what it is becoming makes the freak show a compelling one. Perhaps not compelling enough to carry the entire film (it does seem to peter out near the end) though that could be down the the understatedness of the films tone. Without the whistles and bells Frears resorts to some appallingly meaningful stares at the animal kingdom, and while this doesn't get the heart racing it doesn't belittle the grand performances or the film as a whole.

See it for Mirren's performance. She'll take home the little gold man for this. See it for its scathingly balanced take on an phenomenal situation. See it to see if you believe it.

Highly recommended.