Bryan is quite right about Helen Mirren. Her performance is as good as any I have seen ever. It is not an impersonation. It is more like channeling. For me, the strangest thing in the film was the shots of the people outside Buckingham Palace sobbing over someone they knew only as an image on screens and magazine covers. I suppose for many the pivotal scene is the one when the Queen is stranded in her Land Rover and sees the stag - it is a great scene. But subtler, and more telling, I think, is when she recalls that she was "just a girl" when she ascended the throne.
Yes, Blair comes off well, and Cherie does not. Neither does Prince Philip. Though Charles does in a sad way. And if Alastair Campbell is anything like what he is portrayed in the film, what an awful person he must be. I suppose what is great about the film is that it is really in no way sensational - and extraordinarily human.
I shall now have to see A Scanner Darkly.
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