it took me months to secure a bargain dvd and after seeing the film, i'm left with befuddlement. helen mirren was marvelous. michael sheen was spot on as tony blair. with the story arc, the title could have easily been the queen and the new prime minister. or the queen and tony blair. the movie was centered on that ill-fated week after princess diana lost her life through a car crash in paris and how the queen, the head of the commonwealth reached a compromise with a freshly elected labour prime minister in handling the public mourning of one of the world's most popular and photographed celebrities.tony blair may have described diana as a people's princess (coined by alastair campbell as shown in the film) but to the royal family she was just an "annoying" spotlight-grabber who should have forfeited her luster and prominence after her divorce from prince charles. it took several phone calls from the labour leader to convince the queen to consider an ostentatious funeral service rather than the "let the spencers decide proclivity." the production and technical aspects and performance were brilliant. prince philip the character (my, my the language), not james cromwell the actor (wasn't he too towering to play the consort?) was corrosively engaging. prince charles essayed by alex jennings, was such a weakling.
diana's sons william and harry were merely obscured backdrops at balmoral castle. we saw a populace who couldn't contain their sadness and a family who didn't even shed a single teardrop. i'm intrigued if prince charles' sobbing in paris was a cinematic setup. blair threw a tantrum at his republican staff towards the end of the reel as he accentuated the queen's devotion to service, a vow not of her own choosing.
i don't advocate a cherie blair attitude. but though quite stuffy and humdrum, the queen's routines, her duties aren't that lousy and stale. she gets to live in castles and palaces and get curtseyed by subjects. a life where you don't have to think of money. she could always abdicate but the safe haven of being queen is a great mood elevator.
as we commemorate the 10th death anniversary of princess diana, my thoughts are on camilla and her sojourn to the mediterranean. i still reminisce the beguiling diana of my childhood. how i was glued to the press releases, not the tabloid portrait. she had the charm and the people were captivated. but as my husband lays it out "so some posh bird died ten years ago, get over it."
3 comments:
Hotness. I'm gettin a Tim Roth vibe in Captives(?) you know, that scene with Julia Ormond in the bathsroom stall. Yummers.
Kindly delete my previous comment. I just type without thinking or looking. There's some funky metallic taste lingering in my mouth and I'm sleepy as hell and I'm at work. Anthony is a hoot. Would Lizzie Windsor switch places with me wiping C. Diff crap from people's butt cracks? Hell no. Phillip is tall and from bio excerpts I read in Mod magazine during the 80's, quite a stud. Guess the character has to be really looming cause Il Tampolino, the future king of England, is reportedly intimidated by him and has had a much closer bond with his uncle Lord Mountbatten. Guess you already knoe this my fellow geek. Alll mi DI coffee table books are still fastidiously, pristinely unwrinkled and hid safely away from the coffee table.
i know about the mountbatten stuff way back and i've just read about the part the lord viceroy played in the break-up of the empire in the sub-continent. james cromwell's is 6'7" to philip's 6'2" but was still credible as the prince consort as most of his scenes are either sitting on the couch or lying in bed. one scene at buckingham when the royals were inspecting the cards and flowers punctuated cromwell's lanky frame.
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