That's HM QEII on the left; on the right is Helen Mirren in her Oscar-winning role as The Queen.
Can you think of another public-relations turnaround as dramatic as that of Queen Elizabeth II? Remember 1992, her "Annus Horribilis," when three of her children separated from their spouses, a fire blazed through Windsor Castle and her subjects cried that the Queen should pay taxes like everyone else? How long ago that seemed this week, when on her American visit HM demonstrated that light is the wit who wears the crown. Did the film The Queen help rehabilitate her image, transform her from the Queen of Diamonds to Queen of Hearts? Sure, it helps to have a geezer-babe like Mirren play you --she could warm up an iceberg. But it also helps to have a dramatist as sympathetic as Peter Morgan imagine the richness and complexity of your inner life, framing you as a "No emotions please, we're British" product of The Greatest Generation. And it doesn't hurt to have a filmmaker as shrewd as Stephen Frears to position you as the Pack Leader of a country of Corgis. Can you think of another film portrait that made you sympathize with a figure about whom you were neutral or antipathetic?
Comments (6)
So help me God, Anthony Hopkins as Richard Nixon in Oliver Stone's "Nixon."
But not Larry Fishburne as Ike Turner in "What's Love Got to Do With It?"
Posted by Anon | May 9, 2007 8:44 PM
Posted on May 9, 2007 20:44
"The Queen" was indeed a wonderful movie.
However, controversy in England some time ago don't mean as much in the US. My guess is Queen Elizabeth has always been popular here. In addition to being something we don't have, like the usual comments on grandparents vs. parents, in the US we get to see the charm without any downside. The English can worry about expenses of the monarchy, taxes, fox hunting, and all that. And, she is becoming more grand-motherly.
Posted by Howard B Haas | May 10, 2007 8:18 AM
Posted on May 10, 2007 08:18
One real-life portrayal that has always fascinated me is Robert DeNiro as Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull. One scene that always manages to make me feel both horror and sympathy is when LaMotta is alone in a jail cell near the end of the film. DeNiro pounds the walls with his fists and head, wailing, "I'm not an animal." Although LaMotta is by no means 'sympathetic', the scene still manages to make me feel for him. The character could've been a one-dimensional ogre, and for the most part he is a brutal human being, but DeNiro somehow manages to convey some humanity, too.
Posted by Brian | May 10, 2007 12:00 PM
Posted on May 10, 2007 12:00
Good post, Carrie. For my farthing, The Queen was the Oscar-in-waiting that should've happened, in no small part due to the perfect combination of Peter Morgan and Stephen Frears rising well above a cheap shot to complex portraiture. And all good thanks for choosing Helen Mirren and sparing us another Dame Judi Dench feeding frenzy.
I can think of a few biopics that didn't necessarily completely turn me around on someone but certaily added to my thinking.
1>Jan Troell's Hamsun ('96), one of the great, overlooked pictures of the 1990s, deepened my understanding of the peculiar contradiction of Norway's Nobel-prize winning author, Knut Hamsun, who on the one hand sketched the small rhythms of Norwegian village life and on the other embraced Hitler as a welcome relief from British dominance of Europe. Watching Max Von Sydow, in one his most exquisite performances, realize he has made an error and go plead with Hitler for Norway is one of the most memorable scenes of the '90s.
2> Call me a Hitler freak, but the project in Oliver Hirschbiegel's Downfall (2004) is to take you into Hitler's bunker during the last days. It reduced Hitler from the mythological to something more like a manic depressive with unchecked power. Has Bruno Ganz ever been better?
3> Speaking of madness, Nicolas Hytner's Madness of King George (1994) expanded my knowledge of George III considerably. Not simply because it brought to light his porphyria-induced dementia. Hytner took it further by delineating the impotence of a political system based on monarchy. Wonderful performance by Nigel Hawthorne as George III, not to mention the ubiquitous Helen Mirren as another queen, Charlotte, and best of all, Ian Holm as Dr. Willis, who understood the many reasons--from state to personal -- to look a king in the eye and say no.
Posted by harlan jacobson | May 11, 2007 2:14 PM
Posted on May 11, 2007 14:14
"Geezer-babe?" Nice tawk! I suppose you kiss your mother with that mouth, missy?
Posted by JDM | May 11, 2007 10:32 PM
Posted on May 11, 2007 22:32
Hey, Carrie: how about Days of Glory? What an amazing war picture, as pungent a drama as it is a political statement. And it actually got the French to make amends!
ps: Harlan Jacoson, a Hitler freak? Who knew?!
Posted by Joanna Langfield | May 20, 2007 11:19 PM
Posted on May 20, 2007 23:19