Let me ease my way back in with a film review - or at least thoughts on seeing a film. The film in question being The Queen, recently released here in New York and which I saw in a packed cinema on the East Side last night.
I will not deviate from the ecstatic reviews this film has already received (check some out here and here). Helen Mirren is astonishing, but almost as good is Michael Sheen as a remarkably young and remarkably popular Prime Minister. This is British art-making at its very best, and the Manhattan audience I saw it with lapped it up, applauding generously at the end (although some of the jokes, most particular keeping Gordon Brown on hold, went unremarked).
What clinched the film for me was the way Stephen Frears, the screenwriter, understood all his characters, even loved them, and shied away from any cheap point scoring. This was a Blair who was both a consummate politician at the height of his power (whatever your view of him) and a man clearly touched by the Queen and her approach. This was also a monarch who, for all her dowdy lack of emotion, showed a strength and a dignity that one could not help admire. If I were a member of the House of Windsor, I would be seriously pleased with this film.
I am no monarchist, but neither am I much moved by republican arguments. These arguments might have the force of some considerable reason and logic behind them, but life needs more than reason and logic. I see no reason to think that a republic of Britain would be in any remote way a better place to live, and I can see plenty of ways in which it might well be worse.
But if The Queen is in some ways a moving elegy to our current monarch, it also points to where the monarchy's downfall may lie. What may well make it untenable in the long run is the sheer cruelty inflicted on the individuals that fate has thrust into this position. Grotesquely materially privileged they may well be, but watching this film I couldn't help feeling that before too many more generations are out, someone within the royal family will simply throw up their hands and say enough is enough. Revolution will not come from outside. The British monarchy way well give up on its own.
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