This week @ the Byrd: Queen
photo credit:
Jake Lyell
I’ve said this time and time again, but last year I should have tried to make money off of it — in order to win an Academy Award for Best or Best Supporting Actor or Actress nowadays, you must be impersonating a real figure in a biopic about that figure. If you have the misfortune to star in a film that does not feature people doing impressions of real people, then your only recourse is to hope for either a year without a biopic contender (good luck) or to hope that you are Russell Crowe. After I saw this film last year, I knew the Oscars would be a done deal and Helen Mirren would certainly take away the Best Actress award.
I liked the movie, and I thought she did a perfectly fine job, but my enthusiasm for The Queen is really only that there finally exists a film that both fits this weird proclivity of the Academy’s and also deserves much of the praise it will undoubtedly receive. There are many films that have won ridiculous accolades undeservingly, simply because they a) reaffirm for us that we really enjoy the music/good works/art of some dead famous person and b) feature a performance that can be compared to a real live figure, and therefore is easily applaudable in our minds. But if biopics are the only way to get some Oscars around here, I am happy to say that The Queen is a good one, and I will feel no remorse when it sweeps the Awards.
Director Stephen Frears does make things a little risky for himself, though, by portraying well-known heads of state…in a different country. For instance, I’m assuming James Cromwell did a bang-up job as Prince Phillip, but to be honest with you, I have, like, no idea what Prince Phillip is like. I actually had to remind myself who he was. So I’m hoping that just because we can easily look at Jamie Foxx and say “Gotcha. You’re being Ray Charles,” The Queen won’t arrive at our Halloween party and have to explain its clever costume, which doesn’t garner nearly as much attention as the undeserving but easily recognizable Sexy Dorothy.
In sum, The Queen is a very, very interesting film that is probably a great take on what probably happened within the confines of the Royal Family after Princess Diana’s death. I’m blindly trusting Frears on the accuracy of this statement, not just because he knows more than I do, but because he includes footage of President Clinton. I hadn’t realized how much I missed him.
