Stephen Frear’s “The Queen” was released in 2006. During its 103 minutes of duration, Frear recreates the days that followed Princess Diana’s death: its impact on the media and on the British people and the Queen’s reaction to the decease itself and to the massive series of reactions it triggered.
In this essay, I will comment and analyse some of the events and aspects depicted in the film: the immense exhibition of mourning shown by the British society, the Royal Family's attitude towards it and the consequences of this attitude: a major increase in the public opinion's hostility against the Crown.
If someone asked me which is the more symbolic representation of the British Empire nowadays, the reign of Queen Elizabeth II would come to
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She is portrayed and seen by the media and the people as a vulnerable, innocent, loving mother and woman. The mourning attitude of the British since the morning of August 31th when they find out in the news about her car accident shows without no doubt how popular she was back then, even though she wasn't a member of the Royal Family anymore. As seen in the film, the position of the Crown and of its different members, as we will further analyse consists on trying to evade the events that are taking place. They cannot believe why someone who has been involved in so many scandals can be as beloved and honoured as Princess Diana. Furthermore, this might even proof some kind of jealousy, clearly seen in a scene in which Prince Charles says: " This is what happened when I was with her, she was always more popular than me". According to British historians "the great royal paradox refers to royalties who want to be just like us but at the same time entirely different from …show more content…
Their massive exhibition of grief for Diana's death and their later social unrest with the royals, especially with the Queen, for their scandalous absence and lack of action, play a major role in the Queen's change of attitude at the end of the film. Not only because she notices, as Tony Blair tries to warn her, that hostility beneath her subjects is increasing, but because she seems to in some way empathize with Diana, seeing her perhaps as the vulnerable young girl she was when she married her son. The Queen's scenes with the stag are crucial to understand this: while being out in Balmoral, she sees a majestic stag free in wildness. At the end of the film, however, she finds out that the stag has been killed by a hunter and she seems upset. This is a metaphor that represents Diana as the vulnerable and free stag that has been
Five years following the Second World War, the setting of 1950s England is skillfully illustrated, as the nation is no longer much of a powerhouse. The way of life that has fulfilled the de Luce family is waning, as economic realism and modern life approach the under-funded country pile. Bradley captures the distinct era in history, a mixture of post-war adversity and the Empire coming to its end. Flavia is bemused; uninformed of the physiological effects the war had placed...
...vernment that led them into such a crisis. In stating that this movie is a valuable piece of our cultural history, it is not to say that this film should be taken as a historical piece only. There is a danger in relying on material culture for historical knowledge. This danger exists in the fact that during the course of years, creative intentions become lost, and only the product remains. To rely on this film for historical knowledge, rather than cultural information, would be gravely wrong. This is because this film was not made to be historically informative, and centuries from now, society may not know that Kubrick's suggestive names, distortion of actual history, and cultural bias were simply vehicles used to convey an opinion. So these same vehicles that make this film effective as a societal criticism make it inaccurate as a source for historical knowledge.
Through their use of allusion, symbolism and representation they portray many of societies flaws and imperfections. Such an imperfection includes the illustration of how totalitarian governments abuse the power they have acquired for their own gain, harming the people they are sworn to serve and protect. Through this abusive self-gaining government, we all are liable to become victims of consumer culture caused by the blind obedience to advertising and propaganda, being unable to form or voice an opinion of our own. But this lack of opinion can be at fault because of our own apathy, the ignorance and slothfulness that is contributed to the role we play in our society and the importance of that roles ability to motivate and inspire change. Whether you’ve read or viewed the novels or feature films I’ve discussed I have no hesitation in saying any text or film you have seen has been used in some way, shape or form to convey the criticisms of our ‘perfect’
The Last King of Scotland, directed by Kevin MacDonald and based on the novel of the same name by Giles Foden, shapes events from the reign of notorious Ugandan dictator Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker) into a dramatic and attention-grabbing narrative. However, the film, which was praised by critics and garnered a Best Actor win for Whitaker at the Academy Awards, focuses far too much on “sexual conquests of a young white doctor who heads to Uganda in search of adventure” (Leader). By blending together real people in order to create artificial romantic subplots, it not only skates over fascinating historical detail, but also fails to portray any women as nuanced or developed characters. Rather than developing their personalities or exploring their motivations, it portrays female characters as either mindless sex objects whose only purpose is to provide male characters and viewers with pleasure, or as beings whose only purpose and motivation is their maternal instinct and who are shaped only by their reproductive choices. By crushing women into two-dimensional caricatures, the film robs itself of credibility and sacrifices historical legitimacy in favour of cheap entertainment.
Classic narrative cinema is what Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson (The classic Hollywood Cinema, Columbia University press 1985) 1, calls “an excessively obvious cinema”1 in which cinematic style serves to explain and not to obscure the narrative. In this way it is made up of motivated events that lead the spectator to its inevitable conclusion. It causes the spectator to have an emotional investment in this conclusion coming to pass which in turn makes the predictable the most desirable outcome. The films are structured to create an atmosphere of verisimilitude, which is to give a perception of reality. On closer inspection it they are often far from realistic in a social sense but possibly portray a realism desired by the patriarchal and family value orientated society of the time. I feel that it is often the black and white representation of good and evil that creates such an atmosphere of predic...
In this essay I will explore the different effects film and theatre has on an audience and if the transition from theatre to film, which tends to be thought of as “deadening”, can be truly successful. To do this I will be using the production of War Horse as a vehicle, and I shall be investigating and exploring the different points of view of critiques and journalists and by using my own personal experience as well.
The Princess’s funeral brought together a gathering of the powerful (English royalty) and the beautiful (Hollywood’s finest), and the poor. More than a million mourners crowded the streets of London to toss flowers upon her casket. Even as it was happening before their eyes, no one could believe it was real. In the days and weeks that followed her death, everyone was trying to figure out what she had meant and why the world was responding to her death with such grief. Was it her flaws, her failures, her struggles with her weight and her self-esteem, and her refusal to be inhibited by them? Was it her good works and the way she touched the common people, the handicapped, drug addicts, and lepers. Could it have been the way she broke away from her failing marriage and reinvented herself as a single mother but still the “Queen...
What we see is not always what is true. While watching the film, the audience is captivated by the “archival footage” shown while Polley’s family members and friends recall what kind of person her mother, Diane, was. Initially, we as the audience do not question the footage...
Once I said that Diana is the light of this world. Now I know that these words were not strong enough. What she gave this world, to us her people is indescribable, but we do not seem to understand this until it is gone. Diana was a remarkable woman who gave light, hope, and love to this world. However, at the moment where she finally gained happiness and freedom she was killed. The harsh world took Diana away and left only the memories of this light, a gift from God, our Princes Diana in our hearts.
By the time she becomes a fixture in the glamorous yet empty world of ‘60s fashion and begins sleeping with Laurence Harvey’s Miles (an affair that, the moment it begins, we know won’t last), I found myself hoping that Robert would discover her tryst and give Diana her walking papers. From her phony demeanor while chatting with the so-called “elite” of London society to the manner in which she leads on the Prince late in the film, Diana grows increasingly more loathsome as the movie
The princess’s anxiety formed from the thought of the queen killing her. She ordered a sweep of her room and a sound system for several nights. She thought they were going to her killed because Prince
After the Theatres Act of 1968 had abolished censorship on stage, some of the plays that hit the stage were highly political, brutally direct and very controversial. People were writing about issues that had been ignored by the government and it was ‘bubbling away for some time in British society’ to the point in which, when the censorship of the stage was taken away, new controversial plays burst onto the stage every decade like Saved (originally performed before the censorship in 1965), Blasted (1995), Cloud Nine (1979) and Shopping and Fucking (1996). When the Theatre Act abolished the censorship, the issues of Britain flooded onto the stage in a very controversial manner; each play was addressing a different issue in Thatcher’s Britain or just generally about Britain’s problems or history. I’m going to talk about one of the plays that looked at the society in Victorian times (in which a British family live in Africa) and then how different that society was to the same characters but in 1979; or what would have been the ‘modern day’ when the play was released. I’m going to talk about the ideologies and themes in the play, Cloud Nine by Caryl Churchill.
...s her ‘life was touched by tragedy’ and that the Royal Family had a part in that but he inverts the statement quickly not to cause any offence. The word ‘tragedy’ is personified showing that it was not Diana’s fault of the bad in her life. ‘She touched the lives of so many’ is a declarative sentence implying that she has touched your life. He also looks straight at the camera to exaggerate the point.
2. Edmund Spenser's "The Faerie Queene" is considered a Romantic epic poem. What is the definition of an "epic"? Does Spencer's poem appear to you to be an epic? Why, or why not?
Twigg, Stephen. “Princess Diana’s Legacy - What Legacy?.” The Huffington Post UK. Published on September 6, 2012.