求The Queen英文影评~`

1:
Imagine for a moment you are newly elected landslide Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and your modernising beliefs don't really welcome obeisance to an outdated monarchy. Princess Diana dies, and the nation turns with venomous tooth and claw (aided perhaps by a certain spin doctor) against the Royals. A golden opportunity? But Blair feels there is something unseemly about tearing the Queen to bits and, in the middle of the crisis, kicks in some damage control.
This is the dynamic of power that bounces back and forth, aided by shrewish asides from Cherie Blair ("Off to see the girlfriend, then?") and her hilarious curtsy that manages to be respectful while still taking the p*ss. Delivering a sparkly dialogue and an especially witty battle between monarch and minister, director Stephen Frears' central accomplishment still has to be casting Helen Mirren as the Queen. No hard-line royalist, Mirren has said she thought twice before accepting her honours as a Dame of the British Empire in 2003, but her portrait here is convincingly astute, supporting a remarkable physical transformation with a sensitive characterisation that endears the Queen to us and renders her majesty's charisma all the more apparent.
In an early scene where the Queen is chatting to her portrait artist, she mentions the coming election and expresses a longing to vote, just once, for "the sheer joy of being partial." The artist reminds her that it is, after all, her government, and Queen Elizabeth retorts, "Yes, I suppose that's some consolation." Obviously there's some things money can't buy.
The film examines her character, her stoical dignity born of years of tolerance not of her choosing, and is maybe so gripping because previous portraits have been little more than a regal cipher. At the end, we feel that we have been privy to the private life of a person who, like her or not, is a feature of everyone's life in the UK. It maybe lacks the grandeur that is traditionally associated with the Queen, but is nevertheless a fairly sympathetic portrait. When Blair tells her how her ratings have dropped to an all time low, she is genuinely upset that she has failed to read her public - to whom she has devoted her life. The film, with all its light-hearted touches, maybe even assists the process of 'modernisation' that the Monarchy now believes is inevitable.
Much of the power in the performances is from unexpressed emotion. All the players are in such important positions that displays of feeling are usually taboo, publicly and sometimes privately as well. After her husband takes her grandchildren stag hunting to 'take their mind off things', the Queen is privately close to shedding a tear for the stag. A moment in the Balmoral countryside when she is alone with the creature reveals a sense of wonder in her that she cannot communicate to the human companions of her world, and she visits the body of the beast (when it is later killed by a neighbour) with more alacrity than she feels towards a dead daughter-in-law who has been her near ruin. Diana, in life, was perhaps also isolated, and we are reminded of her devotion to causes such as banning land-mines - causes to which she could unleash her emotion and, fortunately for her, to which the public could also identify.
The film evokes strong feelings - not least in bringing back the sense of national mourning that followed Diana's death (actual footage is used and the moments leading to the car crash are movingly re-created) even if this goes on to an almost sugary excess. Add to that the crisis of feelings within the Royal Family itself, the sense of isolation felt by the Queen, and the release of the film near the end of Blair's career, and you have a movie that presents a whirlwind of emotion that will thrill public tastes.
2:
It's still early innings, but Stephen Frears's The Queen is definitely going on my short list for best film of the year, and it will stay there. It's a flawless, burnished production, a virtually perfect film. This glowing, suspenseful docudrama retells the story of the days of upheaval in London and elsewhere, in 1997, shortly after Tony Blair had just won for Labor, by steering clear of trades unions and welfare statism, while flogging his "let's modernize Britain" program, window-dressing for his Clinton-like political shift to the right.
Then, on August 31, Princess Diana, recently divorced from Prince Charles, was killed in a high speed auto accident in midtown Paris. The film's story turns on how various echelons of British society reacted following Diana's death. Dramatized are many vignettes that bring together the major personalities at the center of the highly public dilemma that unfolded in the few days following Diana's passing.
Helen Mirren was, as they say, born to play Queen Elizabeth II. In every tableau, in every body movement, in every nuanced shift in feeling she conveys to us, with or without words, she is simply majestic. But this movie is far more than a showcase, a star vehicle, for Ms. Mirren. Each of the major supporting players, portraying some prominent person, is superb. Besides The Queen, we have The Queen Mother (Sylvia Syms), Prince Philip (James Cromwell), Prince Charles (Alex Jennings), Mr. Blair (Michael Sheen), and their respective retainers, playing out at close range their responses to one another, within the framework of a taut cultural and political crisis, one that is, above all else, a threat to public support of the Monarchy.
This drama takes place in an enervating, though also suppressed, emotional atmosphere, the tension level constantly ratcheted up by the principals' responses to pressures from the public and the press. (Of course the accuracy of the depictions is open to some question at least, and, in addition, there is the insurmountable problem that no one knows for sure the full truth about many of the rumored conversations -discussions that might or might not have transpired among these people - that are dramatized here. It is fair to say that the actors have magnificently sculpted their characterizations to fit the common perceptions of these celebrities in the public eye.
But there's more: I haven't yet touched on the main reason that I think this movie will be considered a classic decades from now. That is it's overarching subtext, not about individual personalities, but about a deep change in the very fabric of social custom signaled by events after Diana's death, especially in Britain, but also in the U. S. and other "anglophilic" "developed" nations. The point is made crystal clear in the film: Elizabeth's seemingly callous aloofness from the public in the wake of Diana's death is the result of her conviction, based on her upbringing, that duty must come first, that stoicism is the face one shows the world, while personal feelings are an entirely private matter, hence not to be aired in public. One must soldier on. Stiff upper lip. The English way.
According to this film narrative, Queen Elizabeth makes a serious miscalculation when she fails to consider, or perhaps even to perceive, the fact that the terms of public discourse - perhaps especially with regard to the open expression of personal sentiments - have changed radically around the world. Frank disclosure of personal feelings and issues once considered taboo for public consumption, emotional "witnessing," and even mass catharsis, have for many become the norm, displacing public stoicism, in response to poignant events. We know this from many lines of evidence, of course: confessional literature and film; the outpourings of personal tragedy and conflict on "Oprah" and a host of clone television and radio shows, and so on. But the Royals' cloistered existence very probably has always shielded them from accurately gauging the pulse of popular societal changes.
Never in recent times had there been such a worldwide wave of acute public grief over the loss of a single person, perhaps not since John Kennedy's death, as was the case of Diana, whom so many admired, revered, indeed, loved, even if from afar. The Queen documents with brilliance and power this major sea change in societal conventions, a shift that historians will undoubtedly look back upon as one of the most important and influential quakes in the tectonic annals of civil conduct.
3:
From the unsurpassed deconstruction of social class by Stephen Frears comes a prudent slice of royal British history, spanning across little more than a week of events. The death of the "People's Princess" Diana hedges the story with the ill malaise of the people turned scornfully against the Queen and her family for not grieving or acknowledging the tragedy.
The thematic conflict takes place between the obsolete old school (the Royal Family) inside the walls of Buckingham Palace and the reformist new school (newly-elected Tony Blair and the Labour Party) at 10 Downing Street, hovering between the two polarized households with stately direction. There is a point of hair-dresser gossiping tendencies in enjoying a film like "The Queen" as a candy box of intrigue is waiting to be unwrapped behind the closes walls of the monarchy, but Frears makes the content accessible to all.
Of course, "The Queen" as a person and film are not wholly grounded in reality; "Last King of Scotland" screenwriter Peter Morgan has scripted a fiction-based account of the dialogue and relations that took place in 1997, but an admirably reasonable take it is. Reality ties are not completely severed, and Stephen Frears makes the decision to further ground his film with newsreel footage interjected at common intervals and majestic steadicam shots that seems to aptly snap up the stately atmosphere of Buckingham Palace.
But "The Queen" is undeniably a custom-tailored vehicle for Helen Mirren who captures the complex nature of the titular character with stoic, dignified, purse-lipped composure. The staunch refusal to publicly speak about the event of Diana's death—nor allow for a civic funeral, nor fly the throne's flags at half-mast all alienated her immensely from her people, even though she was one of the people who grieved the most. Needless to say, this is a challenging role to inhabit, but Mirren is superb in all of her conflicted sorrow. The sum of her performance is all the little stoic details, the suppressed emotions she bottles up with a lid but which sometimes bubble up and how natural she makes "staged" appear.
It is in a way a pity that Helen Mirren's fine performance casts such a wide-ranging shadow over the rest of the cast. The film on its own may be rather lovely, but the key figure who emerges most prominently and most nobly is undoubtedly Tony Blair as portrayed by Michael Sheen, and who regrettably received next to no buzz. The fact is that Sheen is just as credible as Mirren in his own right, creating a layered and conflicted young Prime Minister with pending allegiances. Stephen Frears will always remain an actors' director and as a result the success of "The Queen" rests squarely on the apt shoulders of its cast. It's delightedly humorous in tone, practicing an unmistakable high-brow British comedy that subtly treads on the tragedy at hand.
4:
I was in college when Princess Diana died in a sensational car accident, brought about by a flock of determined paparazzi. To be honest, I didn't pay that much attention to the events going on across the pond. I was really no more than a child for much of the time that Diana was capturing the imagination of the American people, so I didn't fully understand her allure, and I certainly didn't understand, or care much, about the politics of the royal family.
So watching "The Queen," Stephen Frears' wonderfully fluid account of the few days following the death of Di and its impact on the royal family, I had the uneasy feeling one gets when he realizes that something of extreme cultural importance has happened right under his nose without his realizing it. I had much the same feeling during "Hotel Rwanda." It's the "I didn't realize all of THAT was going on" experience.
I don't know how accurate "The Queen" is, and I don't know that anyone save Her Majesty herself could know for sure. Certainly it's an awfully one-sided movie. In Frears' version of events, Tony Blair single-handedly saves the monarchy from the vitriol of the British people. It's only through his dogged determination that Elizabeth grudgingly lets go of her royal principles and gives the people what they need -- that is, a sign that the royal family is comprised of a group of people with actual blood in their veins and feelings in their hearts. Michael Sheen, an unfamiliar actor to me, plays Blair beautifully; his performance goes beyond mere mimicry and conveys both the exhilaration and overwhelming sense of responsibility felt by a man who happens to find himself in a job for which he happens to be perfectly suited at one of the most critical moments in his country's history.
But though everything is greatly slanted toward Blair, the film does a good job of cluing us in to Elizabeth's point of view as well. Here's a lady who inherited a job she did not choose, and who by the very nature of that job is turned into a media spectacle against her will. It's important to remember that during the moments when her and her family's callousness toward Diana and her death borders on the inhuman; in their minds, Diana played a large role in her own death, and payed a fair price for the stardom she received in return. In Elizabeth's mind, the way the British people behave smacks of hypocrisy; they cry out for blood for the media that caused Diana's death, yet want to hang the royal family for not putting themselves and their grief on display.
Navigating the tricky waters of this tricky part is one of our greatest living actresses, Helen Mirren. Because I like her so much, it gives me great pleasure to say that her performance lives up to its hype. She gives what is so rare in films these days -- a tour de force of expert acting. Just watch her face and gestures throughout this film for the tiny nuances that speak volumes. Mirren has been buzzed about as the front-runner for this year's Oscar race since this movie opened, and for once I find the buzz completely justified. The Academy has a chance to show the world that it can, against all appearances to the contrary, recognize true art and talent when it sees it, so of course they'll probably botch things and give the award instead to a glamour puss who will look better on the cover of "People" magazine. But Mirren I'm sure will be the winner in many people's hearts regardless.
Frears keeps things moving along with quick editing and a fantastic, staccato score whose effectiveness rests on its judicial use. There's something disorienting yet exciting about watching a movie about people who are alive and well, and still serving in the same roles as their fictional selves on screen. In some ways, "The Queen" feels like it should have come out last year, when a number of other relevant, terse and immensely engrossing films flooded the screens. Though if it had, it would have been one great film among many, whereas this year is has quickly risen to the cream of the crop.
5:
No matter who you are, what's your political stand, or your social status, if any. You won't to turn the page or look away from the TV set if there is a piece of news concerning the royals, the British Royals in particular. I think it's human nature so there is nothing we can do about it. That's why it's amazing to realize that the Queen didn't quite understand that and how powerful and moving her surrendering to the fact. I don't know how to describe Helen Mirren's portrayal but I'm tempted to say already (I only saw the film last night) that is among the best I've ever seen. Riveting, totally fulfilling. The illusion is complete and without mockery or mimicry Helen Mirren gives us a full picture of someone who only exists in our minds as a title and in a series of constantly repeating images - hats, smiles, hand waves and holiday greetings from a TV screen - Congratulations to everyone concerned. A total triumph.