Victoria reimagined as queen of diversity
Victoria & Abdul
PG cert, 112 mins ★★★★★
Dir Stephen Frears
Starring Judi Dench, Ali Fazal, Eddie Izzard, Adeel Akhtar, Michael Gambon, Olivia Williams, Fenella Woolgar, Paul Higgins, Tim Pigott-smith
‘The key to good service is standing still and looking backwards,” a royal functionary informs Abdul Karim (Ali Fazal), before the Indian servant’s first, fateful meeting with Queen Victoria (Judi Dench). There’s no question that Victoria & Abdul, Stephen Frears’ new film about the extraordinary friendship between the ageing monarch and her young Muslim attendant known as “the Munshi” has both of those abilities down pat. Beginning with a coy disclaimer that avows what follows is “based on true events… mostly”, Frears’ film is all nostalgia and inertia – a tale ablaze with historical import and contemporary resonance, reduced to commemorative biscuit tin proportions.
Prise off the lid and inside you’ll find an expectedly sensational performance from Dench, who returns to a role she played (and won a Bafta for) 20 years ago in Mrs Brown. But this time, there’s no bushy-bearded Billy Connolly in sight, and almost nothing for the actress to push against – least of all Abdul himself, who remains a doe-eyed and fawning blank slate throughout. The film does make some cursory attempts to give them equal weight – it even begins with him, at the moment he was plucked from his position as a prison clerk in Uttar Pradesh in 1887 to present a ceremonial coin at Victoria’s Golden Jubilee banquet in England. (The job called for someone tall, and he apparently measured up.)
Meanwhile, Victoria, 68 years old and 16 years a widow, is a sack-like shape in a Windsor four-poster, emitting un-regal snores. Tired of the
A tale ablaze with historical import and contemporary resonance is reduced to biscuit tin proportions
unremitting round of royal duties, she longs for novelty and colour – which the handsome, twinkling Abdul, full of wise teachings and swirling stories from the Raj, is delighted to provide.
“Life is a carpet,” he tells her. “We weave in and out to make a pattern.” The way Fazal delivers the line it actually sounds quite profound – and the pair’s early scenes together do have an amicable thrum and snap, as the Empress of India and this humble Muslim bookkeeper playfully sound each other out. There is a detour to the heathery fells of Balmoral, beautifully shot through gauzy rain by Danny Cohen, in which Victoria and Abdul travel by rowing boat to Glas-allt Shiel – the loch-side bothy where the Queen had met with John Brown.
“Oh I miss him, Abdul,” she says. “And Albert. Everyone I’ve loved has died, and I just go on and on.” The hot-and-cold screenplay by Lee Hall (War Horse, Billy Elliot) lets Dench use her last, much-celebrated appearance as Victoria to her advantage: this film is, after all, something of an encore, and by reminding us that we were standing here with her 20 years ago, her reflections on time’s passing pack a brawny emotional wallop.
Yet while this Victoria is sharply attuned to her advancing years, she’s also oddly naive about what her extraordinary power and influence of her empire actually entails. When Abdul mentions the Koh-i-noor diamond and the fate of the Peacock Throne from which it was ripped, she reacts with peering astonishment.
The film also ascribes her some fairly improbable progressive views. Her appointment of a Muslim to a key role in the royal household is positioned, rather optimistically, as a triumph for diversity.
The role you really want to see Dench play is Victoria unairbrushed – and make no mistake, she would have been more than up to the task. But instead the attitudes of the time are conveniently offloaded on to members of the royal household, which turns the second half of the film into a corridor-stampeding farce, as the Queen’s courtiers rush around trying to stitch up the Munshi however they can.
They’re an appealing bunch, cast-wise: Paul Higgins is briskly funny as the Queen’s private physician Dr Reid, Olivia Williams winningly aloof as Baroness Churchill, Eddie Izzard uncannily Tim Curry-like as the scheming Bertie, the Prince of Wales and Victoria’s eldest son, Adeel Akhtar terrific comic value as Abdul’s lugubrious assistant. But their growing impatience with Abdul is easier to sympathise with than it’s probably supposed to be: he does become annoying, largely because the film gives him a genial glow instead of a character, and banks on you not noticing the difference.
“I say he’s the brown John Brown,” one courtier waspishly observes. If only.
Victoria & Abdul is released in UK cinemas on September 15