Judi Dench as Queen Victoria and Ali Fazal as Abdul Karim, her friend, appear in the movie Victoria and Abdul, the story of an unusual friendship. (Photo courtesy BBC Films)
VICTORIA AND ABDUL
In cinemas throughout the Lower Mainland.
The late great theatre critic Kenneth Tynan was wont to judge certain plays as safe to take one’s maiden aunt to. In a similar spirit, one might also categorize the movie VICTORIA AND ABDUL in the same way.
Its pedigree is impeccable, produced as it is by, among others, BBC films, starring a number of great British actors, directed by Stephen (GRIFTERS and THE QUEEN) Frears, and based on Shrabani Basu’s bestselling biography. It holds out great promise of being more than a superficial diversion. Unfortunately it remains a promise unfulfilled.
The film purports to tell the story of the relationship that developed between octogenarian Queen Victoria and a young man, Abdul Karim, who is recruited to travel from his native India to England to present a gift to the Empress of India.
Queen Victoria is attracted to the handsome Abdul, an attraction which results in her asking him to teach her Urdu, ultimately leading to an unlikely friendship.
While this clearly has the makings of an interesting and intriguing historical drama, providing new insight into Victoria, one knows that trouble lies ahead when the film commences with a statement that the film is based on fact – “mostly.”
It is that “mostly” which results in the film’s undoing. The filmmakers have decided that a straightforward history would be too dull, so every effort has been made to make the film humourous and light-hearted. The result is something which is terminally “cute” and often merely politically biased.
This is particularly true of the first half of the film which seems bent on exposing the pointless extravagance surrounding the ceremony of monarchy. This is particularly so in the depiction of a state banquet (with the banqueting hall at Greenwich standing in for Windsor Castle).
At the same time, the depiction of Queen Victoria is clearly aimed at undercutting any notions that she was a stuffy and relentlessly proper person. She is here depicted as an obese glutton, guilty of appalling table manners and complete self-centredness.
A depiction of a picnic at Balmoral is presented in similar vein. At the same time a clumsy and embarrassing humorous note is injected in the film’s patronizing view of the native Indians attempting to fit into the inane complexities of court etiquette.
As the film develops, the intent seems to change as the film becomes a blunt depiction of a court guilty of self-serving, racism, and class snobbery.
Indeed, for much of its running time, VICTORIA AND ABDUL seems to be designed to make republicans of everyone. Unfortunately, this largely ignores what could have been an enlightening character sketch of the Queen and her servant.
And here, since both films star the impressive Judi Dench, one inevitably makes comparison with the far more successful MRS. BROWN. That film also explored the surprising friendship between the monarch and a servant, but in a way which shed far clearer light on the loneliness of the “widow of Windsor” who so clearly yearned for the companionship of a male figure.
This aspect of the story of Victoria and Abdul is occasionally hinted at, and thanks to Ms. Dench’s superlative acting, strikes a far more interesting note, even if it is out of tune with much of the rest of the film.
This is not to say that audiences, including maiden aunts, will not be somewhat entertained by the film. Needless to say, the production values are superb, especially when the film is actually shot at Osborne House, Queen Victoria’s retreat on the Isle of Wight.
The formal stuffiness of the court is brilliantly created. The assemblage of a cast of outstanding actors, many of them in supporting and minor roles, guarantees that the film makes the point it seems to wish to make – the upper-class English have never been portrayed with such scornful clarity.
And while Ali Fazal as Abdul is called upon to be no more than handsome and vapidly pleasant, there is always Judi Dench. In a succession of scenes she portrays the monarch not only as autocratic and authoritarian, but also as a lonely, tired and frustrated woman, trying at 80 to cope with the dull and burdensome routine of court life, and thus responsive to a person who is genuinely himself.
It is this aspect of the film which is the most memorable. Had it been made more sensitively, it could have been truly remarkable.