There is little sense of dissent nor any trace of republican sentiment in this fond tribute to our nearest neighbour’s sovereign. The last film from the late Roger Michell, is, rather than a call to arms, a jumble of ill-defined chapter headings slotted between deftly assembled archive footage. Kudos to editor Joanna Crickmay and the research team.
Working from an inconceivable wealth of materials, in the style of Asif Kapadia’s Amy, the Notting Hill director has created a breezy chronicle, appropriately soundtracked by such poppy musical cues as Robbie Williams’s Let Me Entertain You.
The historical context – and scope of same – makes this an interesting, if superficial document for even the most ideologically opposed viewers. Footage of the planet’s longest-serving leader allows for shared screen time with every political figure from Winston Churchill to Angela Merkel.
Elizabeth: A Portrait in Part(s), assembled ahead of Queen Elizabeth II’s platinum jubilee, also allows for glimpses of jubilees past, of street parties and parades, often in less than salubrious district codes, featuring neighbourhoods dressed up as “Red Indians”, and various branches of the National Front.
Ancient newscasts on exotic visits to far-flung corners already use the phrase “The empire on which the sun never set” in the past tense. A parade of Christmas speeches offers proof of a shifting, increasingly middle-class accent. The decommissioning of the royal yacht marks the beginning of some kind of ending.
But it’s not over yet.
Many, many anni horribiles are reduced to some brief glimpses: Lady Diana (as she was), the mourning crowds assembled ahead of her funeral and a quick hello-goodbye to Princess Anne’s former husband, Capt Mark Phillips.
Amid the greatest hit compilations – frocks through the ages, decades of waving – there are some welcome eccentric selections, including Harry Hill singing as the queen’s head, and cultural commentator Robert Hughes discussing the Mona Lisa.
It’s left to the queen’s attendants and others to walk us through such insider titbits as the protocol of palace visits. A dip into the records – arranged in punchcard form – produces a note on the return of John Lennon’s MBE. Fellow Beatles member Paul McCartney recalls how, around Liverpool, the younger queen was considered a babe, with “heave”.
Despite the occasional shot of the young queen playing tag with sailors, or fun footage of the younger not-yet-queen with her parents before Edward VIII’s abdication marks her out for the throne, there’s very little sense of her as a person.
Well, apart from her delight in horse races; never more so than when she wins back £16 bearing her image.
The film – like its subject – lets the pomp and circumstance do the talking.
