The Queen - best British movie for ages

[Pearly Di]

I am enjoying Vison's posts on this subject.

I think you have it pretty much sussed, Vison.

Part of me feels that kind of pomp and circumstance is a wasteful clinging to the past, but for some reason, part of me truly appreciates the deep cultural and historical foundations such ceremonies reveal.

Athrabeth, this sums up my ambiguous feelings about the monarchy perfectly.

I wonder whether my country can jettison the monarchy (in its present form) without jettisoning its roots. I don’t know.

I do know that I would never want the equivalent of the US President in my country. Because of something Vison pointed out: that the President has to embody the nation AND actually govern. (OK, so that's what British Kings and Queens used to do. With varying degrees of success, naturally. Poor old Charles I lost his head over it!!)

But, going back to the US Presidency ... who on earth could possibly combine such a role??!! Not George W. Bush. Maybe George Washington came the nearest to it? And then, after him, Abraham Lincoln? But, really. That is an impossible job. As the sanctification of JFK shows.

In some ways, we Brits have the best of both worlds: a democratically elected Prime Minister who does the governing for real, and the monarch as a useful symbol, with lots of lavish ceremonial trappings to pull in the tourists.

Athrabeth is right about the door closing ... I think it’s inevitable that once Elizabeth II goes, the nature of monarchy will change forever in this country. I think probably we will retain the monarchy in some form … perhaps a much reduced form, as in other European countries. I'd be happy with that. I really don't want to lose the monarchy altogether. They're only figureheads, sure (and yes, they eat up too many taxes) but I think we would kill something vital in our national psyche if we got rid of them altogether.

Elizabeth II is still a very much respected lady here. For the older generation, she is their visible link with an England that ceased to exist decades ago. She is their visible link with old-fashioned and wholly honourable notions such as duty and service. She is the visible link between the present and the not-so-distant past in which our country faced down the threat of invasion from a racist tyrant. This point was brought out really well in Movie Blair’s impassioned defence of HRH in The Queen - she was a young Princess while London was being bombed every night, she lived through it.

I think the younger generation respect her too. The Royal Family have changed, a bit, since the era of Diana, and I think people see and appreciate that.

Ten more years of Elizabeth II? - sure. Twenty more years? - hmmm, not sure about that. Even if she does live to be over 100, like her mum.

Give Charles his day in the sun, ma'am.

By the way, this was one of my favourite scenes in the film: Tony Blair is on the line to HRH at Balmoral, urging her to reconsider the Royal stance on Diana's funeral. The Queen is quietly angry and - this is the powerful bit - also deeply wounded. "Nobody, Mr Blair," she says, with a controlled, icy emotion, "understands the British people better than I do. This is a time for sober reflection. That's how we do things in this country. With dignity. It's what others admire us for."

She's wrong. About the public reaction. Outside her enclosed little world, the British people are seething with wholly uncharacteristic public emotion. Call it mass hysteria, call it autosuggestion, call it what you will. It's happening.

She's judged the nation wrong.

But at that point in the movie I was totally rooting for her.

Helen for the Oscar!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Old_Tom_Bombadil]

I do know that I would never want the equivalent of the US President in my country. Because of something Vison pointed out: that the President has to embody the nation AND actually govern. (OK, so that's what British Kings and Queens used to do. With varying degrees of success, naturally. Poor old Charles I lost his head over it!!)

It just occurred to me that the US used to have a king. However, he died--reportedly while sitting on the throne.




King Elvis I and Queen Consort Priscilla

[vison]

Eeww. . . .

[Aravar]

Not everyone in England was on Diana's side. There were some of us who found her behaviour distasteful and the public hysteria unwarranted. Tony Blair did'nt speak for me: the sight of him piping his eye in his 'Queen of Hearts' speech was, as much of what he says, a trifle nauseating.

In an interesting essay written shorty afterwards, , in a book entitled 'Faking it: the Sentimentalisation of Modern Society', Anthony O'Hear wrote

Diana as victim is a personification of the Rousseauian principle that the first feelings of nature are always right, and that all the restraints of civilisation, duty and commitment are harmfully repressive. In the therapeutic world in which Diana increasingly moved, one's only duty is to one's own feelings, their expression and fulfilment. If the world does not like it too bad. You scream, you give vent to your anger, you throw yourself downstairs. This is literally infantilism, but it is part of what was being celerated in Westminster Abbey on September 6th, and the root cuase of Earl Sencer's bitterness with the Royal Family who had to put up with Diana's childlike self-centredness. You cuddle and you confess. But what you confess is not guilt. There is no guilt and no forgiveness, because there is no fault and no God to do the forgiving. But in confessing you show your solidarity with all other victims. It is the emotional lowest common denominator, somethoiing which, as it would be said we can all share.

As to the cost of the Monarchy: I doubt that much of the expense would disappear under a presidency. There will still be dinners, junkets, motorcades and aircraft to be paid for In any event the Civil List is more than paid for by the revenues from the Crown Estate, which were assigned to the Treasury by(IIRC) George III in return for such payment,. It may have been a good deal for King George then, but it is a good deal for the Revenue now.

Old Tom Bombadil expreseed the view that he was rooting for Prince Philip. In my darker moments I would not be unhappy to awake to find that he and the Household Division had decided to remove Blair and his coterie from office.

PS there is no stag on the Royal Arms: there is the Lion and Unicorn representing England and Scotland.

[vison]

Thanks for posting that snippet, Aravar. It articulates so perfectly what I think!!!

Leaving Diana out of it, don't we all have stuff like this in our everyday lives? I sure do -- or rather did, when I had to deal with my son's second wife. And others. Mind you, some of the others ARE little kids, so there is hope that they can be taught to behave better. But when it's a woman in her thirties, or a man, for that matter, one's heart sinks.

And we've seen it crop up on message boards, too, thinking it over . . . .

[Athrabeth]

PS there is no stag on the Royal Arms: there is the Lion and Unicorn representing England and Scotland.

Oops. Thanks for catching that, Aravar.

I was visualizing the official coat of arms for the province I live in, which combines elements from the Royal Crest with other symbols.

But I still think the stag image in the movie has something to do with the story of Diana and Actaeon and how it could be analogous to the state of the monarchy at the time.

[Old_Tom_Bombadil]

Old Tom Bombadil expreseed the view that he was rooting for Prince Philip. In my darker moments I would not be unhappy to awake to find that he and the Household Division had decided to remove Blair and his coterie from office.

You know that was a joke, right? I know very little about politics in the UK, and know as little or less about Prince Philip.

Superficially, Prince Philip seems to me a bit like the guy who's married to the celebrity. For example, Oprah Winfrey's husband might be known as "Mr. Winfrey" rather than his actual name. Reportedly many divorces between celebrities occur when the wife becomes more successful and better known than her husband. I guess some guys' egos just can't handle that. It appears that Prince Philip ain't one of those guys. That probably means that he's very secure in himself. I say, "Jolly good, Phil!"

[Primula Baggins]

Secure in himself, maybe, but he also had to have known what he was doing; she was the heir to the throne when he married her, so his life's role was pretty well set.

The problems you talk about often seem to happen when the wife is unexpectedly more successful than her husband, as when a couple of actors at the doing-OK level marry, and then she wins an Academy Award while his career hovers or tanks.

Most real men I know seem able to not just handle but actively enjoy their wives' successes, small or large.

[truehobbit]

Hobby, as for Elizabeth remaining on the throne for another "10 to 20 years", that would have her getting pretty close to one hundred years old before her retirement/death.....but if her mom could hang in there for that long, perhaps she will too.

I know - I just meant that I think this period of time would be necessary to make Prince William mature enough for the role. It is generally suggested that he take over instead of Charles, but while Charles would fit to take over anytime, William would not be for another ten or twenty years at least, I think.

I think Charles will do fine, actually. He's been in training all his life. He's championed a lot of popular causes, and did so long before Diana came along and he's kept right on doing it.

It's becoming scary how much I'm agreeing with vison in this thread.


As to the expense of having a King or Queen: each country has a representative of the country. In the US it happens to be the President, whose role is also to be the head of government. I wouldn't want this solution either, and this union of powers is something that is not generally seen as desirable in modern democracies. So, mostly, if you don't have a monarch to represent the country, you have a President of State or some such title.
I'm not sure that expenses for this role are so much lower than for a royal house (although there may be fewer palaces to upkeep - but then, these are a tourist attraction, too, so everybody can enjoy them). As Aravar said, you still get state apartments and meals and cars and entourage and whatnot to pay for. Not to mention a probably not inconsiderable salary and pension for the job.
And while such a president might do a very nice job (I rather like ours at the moment - he's not elected by the people either, btw, but by the representatives elected by the people), he can't show all the public professionalism the British monarchy at least manages to convey.
A monarch somehow has to be always there - you are always aware of their job because it's something they are born into and live their whole lives in. A President just shows up when the job requires it, and for the rest of the time you forget he's around.

So, as vison said: The point of the monarchy, if there is a point, is to do it right, according to custom - and doing it right and according to custom is just something that should come more naturally to a lifelong monarch than an elected representative - however, if a monarchy should fail to do it right and according to custom, if they were to start neglecting putting duty first and just become a bunch of people who don't have to work for their money and mainly just feed the press with scandals - well, then I'd also say it's time for them to go.
I also think that Charles would be perfectly able to continue doing his duty - what happens with the generation after him remains to be seen.

Some very interesting additional points about the stag - thanks!

[Pearly Di]

Not everyone in England was on Diana's side. There were some of us who found her behaviour distasteful and the public hysteria unwarranted.

Aravar, I am not a Diana fangirl - I neither demonise nor idealise her - but in all fairness to her, she was a naive young woman who married a man who didn't love her. And that is, frankly, an intolerable situation for anyone to be in. Is that a situation you would like your own daughter to be in (if you had one)? I know what my reply to that would be.

Who wouldn't want to leave a marriage that was such an empty farce? But Diana didn't have that option. Such a situation might well have made a more mature person than her pretty bitter, to say the least. Charles is far from guiltless in the matter. If he didn't love the girl, he had no business marrying her.

I understand what Anthony O'Hear is saying, and in many ways I agree with him - the Big Brother series is a fabulously horrible example of that kind of infantilisation - but I don't think that the 'cult of Diana' is to blame for this alone.

She certainly wasn't a saint, but I do have some sympathy for her because of the situation she found herself in - she married a man who didn't love her, who had no business marrying her because he didn't love her. Duty to produce a royal heir be damned, because that's all it amounted to in the end. Bah!

Tony Blair did'nt speak for me: the sight of him piping his eye in his 'Queen of Hearts' speech was, as much of what he says, a trifle nauseating.

Tony's 'queen of hearts' speech was enough to put one of my friends off him for life. And then the final nail in the coffin for her was his endorsement of Bush's war in Iraq. She can't STAND him.

In my darker moments I would not be unhappy to awake to find that he and the Household Division had decided to remove Blair and his coterie from office.

I see little difference between Prince Philip's coterie and that of Blair's, to be honest.

I admire the Queen as a person. There is little else about our present monarchy which I admire. All I have here, really, is a sentimental attachment to our country's history.

And of course a Republic would not be much different. As you say ... motorcades, dinners, junkets, all the trappings of the rich and powerful. Just another form of aristocracy. Meh!

[Primula Baggins]

I wouldn't trade our system for yours, much as I respect its history, but I have to say yours does appeal to me in one aspect: the trappings of the head of state can't be obtained through demagoguery. Of course, the actual power still can.

And as for aristocracy—George W. Bush's brother Jeb, the governor of Florida, says his father and brother are urging him to run for President. (He says, at this point, that he's not interested, but the thought of it was enough to give me quite a chill.)

[vison]

I wouldn't trade our system for yours, much as I respect its history, but I have to say yours does appeal to me in one aspect: the trappings of the head of state can't be obtained through demagoguery. Of course, the actual power still can.

And as for aristocracy—George W. Bush's brother Jeb, the governor of Florida, says his father and brother are urging him to run for President. (He says, at this point, that he's not interested, but the thought of it was enough to give me quite a chill.)

Mrs. Bush, the president's mother, was heard to say, after George Jr. was elected: "I thought Jeb would be president first."

You know, it is beyond me. I find it hard to believe, deep in my heart, that Jeb Bush would get the Republican nomination. If he does? What does it say about the people who choose him? Or the people who vote for him?

Maybe Jeb Bush will think, "They're sure mad at George. Maybe I'll just retire and clip coupons." One can hope.

[truehobbit]

Mrs. Bush, the president's mother, was heard to say, after George Jr. was elected: "I thought Jeb would be president first."

You know, monarchies have been known to evolve out of members of the same family being at the head of the state for a few generations...

[Primula Baggins]

Now I'm not going to be able to get to sleep tonight.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Jeb was very popular as governor of Florida. He is much more articulate then George W., and appears to be quite a bit more intelligent. I suspect that if he did indeed decide to run, he would have the inside track for the Republican nomination. But it's not likely to happen.

[Old_Tom_Bombadil]

Goldberry and I were finally able to watch The Queen last night. The subject matter was not of particular interest to me, but it was interesting to see the dynamics of the royal family. It goes to show that, in some ways, the royal family isn't that different from any other family, subject to divorce and disagreements of opinion.

One of the things I found most surprising was that the Queen was depicted driving her own vehicle, by herself even. When her truck broke down fording a stream she hopped out to check underneath the car. She later remarked about being a mechanic during the war.

The other thing that surprised me was how domestic PM Tony Blair was depicted. He's not above doing dishes and fixing dinner. His life seemed pretty ordinary for the political leader of a country. Can you see George Bush doing any of those things? No, me neither.

I thought the hair and makeup on Helen Mirren was excellent. She bore a striking resemblance to the reigning Monarch of England.

[vison]

The Queen really was a mechanic during the war and apparently she was really good at it. She drives around Balmoral but I don't know if she still drives on public roads.

But I think we also have to take the movie with a grain of salt as far as the domestic scenes go: no one can really know all that stuff for sure.

[Pearly Di]

The Queen really was a mechanic during the war and apparently she was really good at it.

I didn't know that, but it doesn't surprise me. She comes across as an extremely capable person, IMO.

I am 100% sure she doesn't drive on public roads. Too much of a security risk, surely.

As for Tony Blair's domestic life at No: 10, I've never thought about it. I've never thought about our Prime Minister having servants and the like, that does seem very odd to me, although I don't know why it should be. OK, so Churchill had servants, but that was 60 years ago, England was a different country then.

Yeah Tom, Helen was AMAZING. She looked and sounded like the Queen, she WAS the Queen.

[samaranth]

From sam’s immense store of trivial knowledge:

Yes, Queen Elizabeth could apparently take an engine apart and put it back together again. And change tyres. (Which is way more than I can do. )

During the war everyone was encouraged to ‘do their bit’. I’m not sure if it was actually compulsory … my own mother told me she made her own decision about what to do (joining the womens’arm of one of the forces) rather than being sent out on the land (part of the land army) or into the munitions factory. Basically if you were single, and fit you were expected to do something. So, Queen Elizabeth joined the Auxiliary Force.

Pictures here and here.

I did wonder at the scenes showing Cherie Blair cooking the family dinner. That’s Cherie Blair, the slightly controversial leading QC, with a more than adequate work load of her own, I thought? Is that at Number 10, where they would have staff, or in their house in their constituency? However, I thought Helen McCrory was spookily spot on in that role.

But that other Helen takes the prize as the Queen, without at doubt.

[Pearly Di]

Hey, it's Samaranth!

She was a pretty girl, wasn't she? Lizzie, I mean.

Oh, surely the No.10 family have staff to look after them. Yes, of course.

Helen McCrory was an absolute hoot as Cherie Blair. A rather unkind portrayal, perhaps, but VERY funny.

The guy who played Blair was superb. The film was very kind to Blair. But I guess he really did do an awful lot to save the monarchy from disaster at that time.