Your film review
JAMES Burgess is a 27-year-old performance, drama and theatre graduate. The former Fallibroome High School pupil has attended the BAFTA Film Awards in London every year since 2009, meeting stars including Dame Helen Mirren, Christian Bale, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Emma Thompson. James lives on St Ives Close in Macclesfield. You can visit his website at jabfilmreviews. blogspot.com. Victoria and Abdul Rating: Showing at Cinemac until Thursday, September 28 IN 1997, Dame Judi Dench played Queen Victoria in Mrs Brown, which focused on the friendship between her and John Brown in an hour of great need.
That film was directed by John Madden, who also oversaw the portrayal which won Dench her first Oscar – one which quite literally made history as the shortest performance ever to do so. Dench was on screen for less than eight minutes as an icily formidable Queen Elizabeth I, in 1998’s Shakespeare In Love.
The actress brings a wonderfully regal, but also relatable quality to monarchs – and obviously enjoys playing them.
Now, twenty years after Mrs Brown, she may well win a second Oscar, playing Victoria again and directed by Stephen Frears, who collaborated with her on Philomena, as well as with Dame Helen Mirren on her own awards-laden performance in 2006’s excellent The Queen.
Here, a fascinating and little-known chapter in royal history is chronicled. That of Victoria forging another unconventional relationship, this time with Abdul Karim, a young Indian scholar who forms a deeply special connection with her.
Dench’s Victoria is presented as an ageing, initially irascible, gluttonous figure. A very funny early sequence sees her demolish a succession of elaborate courses – ending with profiteroles – only to fall asleep before the two meet! The tone of the film is surprisingly light, the comedy elements work very well, and always make proceedings feel accessible rather than heavy. As she becomes extremely interested in Abdul’s customs and traditions, she very much begins to soften, a bit like the mangos she longs to try: ‘Sir Henry, this mango is off!’, she exclaims incredulously.
His increased presence within the royal household is met with unrelenting disapproval. What’s most shocking is the awful racism levelled at him, particularly by her son, Eddie Izzard’s Bertie (in a far more serious role). Ali Fazal is also wonderfully loyal and unassuming as Abdul, and Olivia Williams is frostily brittle as Lady Churchill. Dench is obviously superb, adding sympathetic, emotional pathos to a delight that’s often just as moving as it is refreshing.