Cinema - The Queen

I’d only just seen Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect when I watched her superb performance in The Queen, so was doubly impressed with her range as an actor. She is an expert at containment - keeping everything pent up inside, only letting her true feelings out through slight gestures. I found myself transfixed by her face throughout, by the odd widening of her eyes to portray distaste, or the tiny lift of an eyebrow to register alarm. Mirren plays Elizabeth II with serenity and sympathy. She does not impersonate, neither does she just make a good ‘lookie-likey’ - she is utterly believable and you do come away from the film thinking you know the Queen a bit better.

One of this film’s strengths is that you feel that you’re having a look at their lives from the inside, it plays well to voyeuristic tendencies while avoiding the polished façade of the ‘at home’ stories you find in Hello and OK! magazines. Another strength is the casting. I loved everyone in this film especially Michael Sheen’s wonderful Tony Blair - he captures Blair’s youth and inexperience perfectly as the new PM and his sense of populist timing, tapping in to the tide of emotion following Diana’s death. The anti-royalist Cherie Blair (Helen McCrory) is hilarious, while spin doctor Alistair Campbell (Mark Bazeley) is sharp, bright and eager with his finger on the pulse of the nation. I even liked Sylvia Syms as the Queen mum. She is completely over the top, but a loveably loud, flagrant granny nonetheless. KA