FRIENDSHIP REIGNS
Victoria & Abdul is a frothy tale of late-life infatuation
Every age gets the royal crisis it deserves. In the 1510s, Henry VIII kept his head while all about him were losing theirs. George III suffered from mental illness toward the end of his reign in the 1800s. More recently came the abdication of Edward VIII in 1936, and the current question of whether the unpopular, twice married Prince of Wales will ever be king.
Queen Victoria’s chaste dalliances are almost comic in comparison, which is how writer Lee Hall and director Stephen Frears treat the events of Victoria & Abdul. The story gets rolling in 1887, on the occasion of the queen’s diamond jubilee.
Victoria, played by (who else?), Judi Dench in a marvellous update to her 1997 turn in Mrs. Brown, has become fat, lazy and cantankerous. She is literally hauled out of bed each morning by her servants, and has a habit of falling asleep between courses at meals, which she otherwise consumes at superhuman speed.
Enter Abdul Karim, played by
Indian actor Ali Fazal. Plucked from one of Britain’s latest colonial jewels on account of being uncommonly tall, the simple clerk is tasked with delivering a ceremonial gift to the Queen. He is accompanied by Mohammed (Adeel Akhtar) — the Costello to his lanky Abbott.
Why the regent and the registrar got along so well is anybody’s guess. History reminds us that Victoria’s previous confidant, her servant John Brown, had died a couple of years earlier, so perhaps she was just looking for someone new on whom to dote. In the film, their eyes meet at the dinner table and that seems to seal it.
What follows is the ultimate upstairs-downstairs farce, with various courtiers (Tim Pigott-Smith, Michael Gambon, Olivia Williams etc.) fretting over Abdul’s Rasputin-like hold on the Queen, while he blithely ignores their racist slurs and revels in the sovereign’s company.
Frears has said he saw the character as a version of Chauncey Gardiner from Being There, all id and no reflection. But Abdul is no simpleton, and teaches his patron how to speak and write in Hindi-Urdu, after which she appoints him her Munshi, or teacher.
Eddie Izzard has a blast as Bertie (a.k.a. the future King Edward VII), Victoria’s eldest son, huffing and strutting down the palace halls and repeatedly claiming that This Is Just Not Done. To which his mother, playing an expert game of brink-womanship, responds with variations on: “But I’m the Queen of England!”
With just a quarter turn in perspective, Victoria & Abdul could suggest some mental instability on the part of the Queen, and go to some very dark places indeed. Instead, the film declares itself to be “based on real events … mostly” and keeps things frothy, at least until we learn the reason why so little of Abdul’s story was passed down in official history.
There may yet come a more documentary account of Victoria’s late-life infatuation with one of her subjects. For now, enjoy this one with a grin and a grain of salt.