"Sleeping in the streets and pulling out their hair for someone they never knew. And they think we're mad!" Prince Philip (James Cromwell) vents to his wife, Queen Elizabeth II (Helen Mirren). Diana, Princess of Wales, has just died in a car wreck, and the British people are reacting as if their leader and messiah had kicked the bucket.
But Diana’s death isn’t the subject of The Queen, nor is it primarily about Elizabeth. Instead of a biography, we have a delicate, thoughtful study of the way the world’s most famous royal family has been forced to change by a rapidly "modernizing" world. The family has lived in splendor that makes even a proud capitalist like myself wince, but their lives are far from easy, with a moral responsibility that would crush a god, but must be borne by a mere mortal.
Even as we know that the British monarchy doesn’t yield anywhere near the power that a typical Western head of state does, I was surprised to see how in many ways they are at the virtual mercy of their subjects. The demise of Diana shakes the public to its core, but Elizabeth insists on treating the death like it would any other outside of the family; by doing and saying nothing.
Cold as it may seem at a glance, Elizabeth is following tradition, a set of rules strictly followed for hundreds of years before she was born. Nonetheless, the public, fueled by the notoriously vicious British press, demands concessions such as putting a flag half-mast over Buckingham Palace and a royal funeral, all for a woman who was no longer part of that family.
The Queen devotes time to the governmental aspect of the Diana crisis, with newly elected Prime Minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) working overtime to tread the thin line between an angry populace and the queen. His advisors lean leftward away from the monarchy, and even his wife (Helen McCroy) stops just short of directly disrespecting Elizabeth, an unthinkable act for her more conservative husband. Blair has no desire to see the monarchy damaged, but finds himself willing to pressure the queen to acquiesce to the national mood.
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