Judi’s magnificent return as Victoria
WAS Dame Judi Dench born to play Queen Victoria, or was Queen Victoria born to be played by Judi Dench? i think maybe the latter.
at any rate, the 82-year-old great dame is on glorious form in Victoria & abdul, a true story of a relationship between the Queen and a trusted servant much less well known than the one told in the 1997 film mrs Brown, in which Dench also starred.
Victoria & abdul, directed by Stephen Frears, begins in the indian city of agra, home of the taj mahal, in 1887. abdul Karim (Bollywood star ali Fazal) is a lowly clerk, selected — for no better reason than that he’s tall and handsome — to travel to england to present a ceremonial coin to the Queen to mark her Golden Jubilee.
also chosen to make the trip is his friend muhammed (played mainly for laughs by adeel akhtar), who, in a subversion of racist attitudes in Victorian times, tells abdul that england is ‘completely barbaric’. at Osborne House, the Queen’s beloved home on the isle of Wight, abdul is instructed to ‘process, turn, bow, present...absolutely no eye contact whatsoever’.
the presentation of the coin has brought him all the way from india, but it is to last only seconds, and receiving it is but one of dozens of duties the Queen has to perform that day. Besides, she is far more interested in stuffing herself with food.
Dench, Frears and screenwriter Lee Hall have huge, uproarious fun with Victoria’s notorious gluttony. indeed the film is worth seeing for one dinner scene alone.
However, abdul and Victoria do lock eyes and there is an instant connection.
Paradoxically, the woman who gave her name to the age is not prey to Victorian
prejudices. Moreover, she has deeply romantic notions about the subcontinent, which she rules but has never visited, and here is dishy Abdul, embodying them.
Soon, he has been made her ‘munshi’, or teacher, to the increasing exasperation of most of those around her, led by her son Bertie, the pompous Prince of Wales (eddie Izzard).
As Abdul charms the Queen, racism grips the royal Household. A word is coined: Munshimania. But Munshiphobia is closer to the truth. A ghillie was one thing, but at least John Brown knew his place. Abdul, it seems, does not.
When the Queen declares that she’s planning to give him a knighthood, there is uproar. even her loyal private secretary Sir Henry Ponsonby (one of the last screen roles for the late Tim Pigott-Smith) supports a rebellion by the household, while Bertie threatens to have her declared insane. This is the cue for an epic speech by Victoria, in which she admits to all her foibles, but thunders that she also has all her marbles.
Dench, in unflinching close-up, delivers it spectacularly. And she gets sterling support throughout, with a top-notch British cast also graced by Sir Michael Gambon (as the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury).
But the film is almost as manipulative as, by all reliable accounts, Abdul was himself. It one-dimensionally depicts the Queen’s advisers as a bunch of blithering snobs and fools, and her munshi as a gentle sweetheart. It alludes to, but largely swerves, the fact that he was arrogant, deceitful and intensely ambitious.
Still, it’s clear that he genuinely adored the Queen and she him. That part of the story is beautifully told — and Dench manifestly loves telling it.