Sunday Movie

Some friends and I went to see "The Queen" at the cinema yesterday. It was not my kind of movie . I am always a bit suspicious of anything considered "historical" when the history in question is less than 20 years old.

Still, the royal family intrigues most of us and for my generation, the death of Princess Diana is much like the death of JFK for my parent's generation in that we all remember what we were doing when we heard the news. (For myself, I was tucking kids into bed and watching a remake of another movie, Cape Fear, when the reports came in.)

I believe there are much more important themes that underlie the death of Diana, which for all accounts and purposes is the death, if not symbolically, of the monarchy itself (a fact made real by an ingenious scene in the movie. See if you can find it). I don't pretend to understand the enigmatic charm that Diana had over us but I do believe that she was the one last chance my generation had to believe in romance and fairy tales. And believe we did. We believed with our whole hearts. We cut our hair to look like her, we wore ridiculous bows on our dresses to be like her and we dreamed of having her life.

What I like about the movie is that it avoided cartoon-ish images of the royal family and a particularly generous profile of Tony Blair is given throughout the film. The character in the film that is least likeable - and least understandable - is Prince Philip (played by the best evil man working in Hollywood, James Cromwell). We don't understand Prince Phillip's rage or bitterness, but a quick study of history helps. Who amongst us would like to marry a queen only to be given a dumpy old castle and not the kingship itself?

At any rate, I cannot recommend the movie on the merits of acting nor on storyline. The few moments when the film really starts to gel for me are edited quickly for another montage of flowers and bows and that smile that haunted us all.