Stuff your ‘awards bait’ sneers in a sack. Sure, on paper, Helen Mirren playing Queen Elizabeth screams ‘automatic Oscar’, but The Queen earns its prestige from the one-two punch of director Stephen Frears and writer Peter Morgan, who each specialise in turning talky dramas about the privileged and powerful into tense, conversational boxing matches. And Mirren fully earns her Academy Award (and Golden Globe and BAFTA) as well. Portraying the queen in the immediate aftermath of Princess Diana’s death, she manages to find a way inside a largely unknowable matriarch without giving in to easy caricature.
Sequels are everywhere at the moment, and the British royal family is no exception. With Charles III officially arriving in early May when the coronation takes place in the UK, it’s a good time to look back at what the movies has brought to our understanding of royalty down the years. Maybe King Charles is perusing the filmography of the Windsors, Tudors, Stuarts, Hanoverians and co – we can be pretty sure he’s had at least a sneaky look at The Crown – to see what he can learn from the movies ahead of taking the crown.
And the answer? Avoid love triangles (erm, additional love triangles), remain composed in a crisis and don’t do anything that Queen Anne does in The Favourite. In short: avoid anything that will one day inspire a Hollywood screenwriter to put pen to paper. Because these days, an uneventful reign is a good reign.
Recommended:
🇬🇧 The 100 best British films
🎩 50 great British actors
❤️ The 100 best romantic movies
🔥 The 100 best movies of all time