The Queen

One of the things that I had wanted to do whilst my Dad was over here was to go to the movies a couple of times. It's not the sort of thing he tends to do back in the UK by himself, so I thought it would be a good chance. Thus, the first evening he was here, we went to see James Bond (apologies if i've mentioned this already) and yesterday I thought it would be a nice idea to go and see the film 'The Queen' given that it was on at a local cinema that caters to the more independent films crowd. Thus, off we went. Whilst the theatre initially looked like it was going to be virtually empty (we were the only ones there with about 10 mins to screen time), it actually filled up pretty quickly such that it was about half full. The only slight annoyance throughout the film was the presence of an American gentleman behind my right ear who seemed to think it necessary to offer single sentence pronouncements at random intervals throughout the film. I had to resist the urge to turn around and give him 'a look' (TM).

I quite enjoyed the film as a whole - and it certainly bought back a lot about the time of Princess Diana's death (for those who don't know, it depicts the week following the accident and the behind-the-scenes wrangling between Downing St and Buckingham Palace) - it actually surprised me how much I could remember about it. Whilst it is indeed a fiction based on real-life events, it is a reasonable extrapolation of what could have happened; certainly, some of the headlines and issues bought up in the film were very familiar about the whole time. The acting is largely excellent - the gentleman portraying Tony Blair is spot on, and Helen Mirren is fabulous as her majesty. At the end of it all, though, when we were leaving the theatre and i was half-listening to other's thoughts on it all, I was certainly left with the impression that both my Dad and I, being British, appreciated the film on a couple more levels than the non-British. I guess that's to be expected. Anyway, i certainly recommend the film.