What’s it about?
Those of us around at the time watched the story of Princess Diana’s death through the eyes of the media. This film tells the story through the eyes of the royal family.
Helen Mirren puts in an excellent performance as HRH Queen Elizabeth II, faithfully portraying a woman who doesn’t put her feelings on show, and whose way of life is “Duty first self second” yet still manages to inject a great deal of feeling into her performance.
Use of actual footage from the week of Diana’s funeral will either bring it all flooding back or make those extraordinary scenes are reality for you if you weren’t around at the time.
There’s a healthy undercurrent of cynicism about the media and the way people in the public eye have to ‘play their game’ to survive, subtly underlined by some prophetic lines:
Tony Blair in response to a call from Gordon “tell him to wait”
The Queen to Tony Blair re what it’s like to be hated “It’ll happen to you one day”
Is it any good?
All in all, I’d give it 3 out of 5. Not one for those into blood soaked action, but worth a look if you’re curious about the behind the scenes of Diana’s death, or who like to watch the power play of the media and politics in action.
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2 comments:
Hey lovin' your blog as it's so cool! Ok so you know my views on this already as we were sitting next to each other.
However, whilst I'm in the category of gangster film genre loving, not content if nobody doesn't die in the first 10 minutes, always on the look out for a scene featuring double guns blazing, Helen Mirren is definately BAFTA bound with this performance.
Not that I'm a royal watcher as you know, but Mirren seems to have captured the disconnected from society at large nature of HRH.
GQ Smooth back again. This has a channel Four film written all over it. With so many fils viving for my hard earned bucks, this one doesn't appeal
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