The Queen & Notes on a Scandal

I haven't been completely deprived of movies in my life. Besides watching Dreamgirls on DVD over and over, I did manage to catch a couple of recent critical darlings.

The first movie, The Queen, is based on an original story about the royal family's reaction to Princess Diana's death. The movie follows British Prime Minister Tony Blair's relationship with Queen Elizabeth and her insistence on handling the death of "the people's princess" privately.



The movie does a good job of putting the mindset of the royals in a perspective we as an audience can relate to. However, the movie does exaggerate the level of contempt the royals had for her and the time it took for them to release a public statement. But who knows? I've heard that British people think the movie is over-the-top. American's probably take the movie as fact, or close to it.



The performances are solid and Helen Mirren does bring much humanity and humility to Queen Elizabeth. Short movie, too, which is a much needed plus in the pushing-three-hour movie run times. ***B***

The second movie is Notes on a Scandal a movie about a more recent cultural development with an added twist.



The movie follows a seasoned teacher, Judi Dench in a psychotic mess of a role (just look at the number of journals she writes), who becomes obsessed with new teacher, Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett). When Dench's Barbara Covett learns that Sheba is having an affair with a fifteen year-old male student, she uses this knowledge to her advantage and manipulates Sheba to her will. The performances are, as always with these two, top notch.



Frankly, I must admit I thought the movie would be good. It's not that the story isn't intriguing or the performances enveloping, it's just that the movie fails to keep your attention and there's not really a big pay-off in the end to satisfy the audiences' need to get their revenge on Barb. It is interesting that the movie splits the audiences moral compass by sacrificing Sheba's immoral acts for thirsting for Barbara's blood. I still can't find a reason why they bring in the Barb element. Is this because the filmmakers wanted to sympathize with Sheba and couldn't find a way to do so without making Sheba a monster? Do we really need a reason to make the perpetrator a victim? Can't we simply be put into her shoes as someone who messed up her life by having an affair with a child? True this element is in this movie, but having a crazy obsessed older lesbian co-worker, who victimizes our flawed protagonist, goes a little beyond overkill. ***C***