Went to see “The Trip to Spain” and saw a preview of “Victoria and Abdul,” in which Judi Dench as Queen Victoria is depressed until she strikes up a friendship with a commoner and their relationship is disapproved of by Victoria’s advisors and heirs.
This sounds a lot like the 1997 movie “Mrs. Brown,” in which Judi Dench as Queen Victoria is depressed until she strikes up a friendship with a commoner and their relationship is disapproved of by Victoria’s advisors and heirs.
I actually laughed out loud a lot. I like all those movies. I mean they’re pretty much all the same but it’s my kind of thing. I just didn’t like the cliffhanger ending.
I wish I had access to the full episodes. I wanted a bit more food porn and description of what they were eating.
Reminds me when I saw “Black Book” in theaters a decade ago. That movie features a beautiful Jewish woman who is enlisted in WW2 to seduce a German officer. While watching the “upcoming attractions” before the movie, the trailer for “Lust Caution” came on…
…in which we saw a beautiful Chinese woman enlisted in WW2 seduce a Japanese officer.
There’s a sort of trilogy of films showing that Queen Victoria was more interesting than she has traditionally been portrayed - Young Victoria (2009), Mrs Brown (1997), and Victoria & Abdul (2017). There’s also a 2001 TV movie called Victoria & Albert. Some sources say that that’s good too, but I haven’t seen it.
She’s an interesting character study - there’s a complicated backstory and a long life through which her essential characteristics played out. Rotten childhood, no father (hence the initial obsessive crush on Lord Melbourne), wilfulness as a young woman upsetting the old-fashioned court flunkeys of the 1830s (“pert” was the least of their insults), appallingly self-centred obsessions transferred to Albert, and therefore equally self-centred and demanding as a mother, matriarch and widow (which rather damaged much of her family for at least three generations - George V supposedly summed it up as he is quoted as saying “My father was scared of his father, I was scared of my father, and I’ll damn well make sure my sons are scared of me” - and they were). Hence too the wilfulness with which she dug her heels in over both John Brown and the Munshi.
I was just watching part of that yesterday. It’s a little heavy on the royals-worship, but pretty good, especially about the time right before 18-year-old Victoria becomes queen. Great cast–Nigel Hawthorne, David Suchet, Diana Rigg, Peter Ustinov.
I’d say the only intriguing thing about the film is that it’s directed by Stephen Frears, who is light years a better director than John Madden (who did Mrs. Brown before boosting Dame Judi to her Oscar in Shakespeare in Love. Still may not be enough to get me through the doors, though since it does feel awfully familiar…