Dramatic Film Reviews
In A&E
THE QUEEN
There was a time when dramatization would seek to recreate for a modern audience a series of ancient events that had passed into the intangible mists of legend. This standard is being swept aside as movie producers across the world begin to realize that more money can be made from revisiting yesterday's news than yesteryear's.
It appears that the much-derided modern palate, quick to find stale all except the freshest of creations, has discovered how to ignore the downside of this reliance on the new. The palate has simply gone on to soften the mind until the two are both so flaccid that they forget the pleasures of the past ever existed. In the past an event might, though it had occurred a hundred years ago, be as dear to the hearts of people as if it had happened that very day, but now events that happened only a few years ago seem to be as distant as the barbaric putterings of previous civilizations.
In The Queen, the moviegoing public has been offered a film crafted with dulcet care to precisely its specifications. It has been given Royalty, at whose center is Princess Di, a character portrayed with enough verisimilitude for even the modern moviegoer. It is a pleasing recipe, and its consumption has delighted gourmets worldwide.
The Queen is not a graceful film. It is an elephant-though it may be draped in purple and sackcloth-urged onward only by the unflagging linearity of historical authenticity. It attempts to correct this defect by marketing itself as 'correcting the record,' professing itself as presenting both controversial themes and controversial treatments thereof. In this, even its controversy is unexceptional.
This is an exceptionally British movie, not because it deals with the monarchy, but because of its cast. The classically trained actors of London can turn the blandest script into a gilded delight. No other country could possibly have done so much with so little, creating from a news-channel special a family tragi-pic in the veritable tradition of the Brontes and Austen.
Fans of BBC will no doubt find admirable sustenance in The Queen; those who have never seen a BBC newscast, and as such are not already intimately familiar with the events surrounding the death of the former Princess of Wales, will be in for a strange viewing experience.
PAN'S LABYRINTH
A little girl has a rough life in reality and a rough life in fantasy. Roll credits.
Students of film might be interested to see how the various varnishes to which this film has been subjected-revolutionary politics, special effects, violence, sexual tension-have managed to conceal the fact that, at its heart, the fairy tale Pan's Labyrinth presents is utterly without origin or purpose. The story would have bored the Brothers Grimm and made Aesop weep for humanity, but for those seeking nothing but the gloss of whatever-themes-are-popular, this film is as much a studied trove as Traffic, Crash, or Babel.
THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND
A young and innocent protagonist discovers his size in the world, the way of the world, and the horrors of the world, at the hands of charismatic and dotty dictator Idi Amin of Uganda. The film is a slow descent into tyranny, terror, and the truncheon, with Amin playing both Virgil and Satan to the protagonistŐs Dante.
By providing for the story an exceptionally simple protagonist, the filmmakers have managed to avoid the necessity of creating a story that deviates from linearity any more than Conrad's Heart of Darkness, another tale of an Africa whose relation to the real Africa is suspect. The character, with stars in his eyes and full of youthful energy, is overjoyed to be shined upon by President Amin. His loyalty is bought by Amin's kindness to him, but is eventually shattered by Amin's, shall we say, lack of kindness to others. Interspersed within there is copulation, international intrigue, abortion politics, and discourses on Western imperialism.
In the end, a person with a passing interest in modern history might be brought great happiness by this film. This shudderingly intense film powerfully reinforces but a shallow, bullet-point knowledge of bullet-ridden Africa's recent past. For anyone with a more serious interest in the events of the story, a well-penned Wikipedia article shall probably provide greater information.