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About.com Rating
A Short, Serviceable Making-Of
The Queen DVD contains a making-of that runs less than 20 minutes. It's workaday, but it gives us a chance to see some of film's crew and hear from the principal cast members out of character. In the most interesting parts, Helen Mirren talks about getting into the role of a famous, enigmatic woman who was still living. The actress says it relaxed her to think of herself as a painter doing a portrait of the queen.
Mirren also states that before each shot, she would move her arm back past her face, then extend it straight out in front of her. That represented for her the way Elizabeth dealt with the world — she would go back into herself, a confident place, full of self-discipline and self-control, and then come out of herself in a straight, steady line.
Audio Commentary by Director and Screenwriter
The DVD provides a jokey and disorganized feature-length audio commentary by director Stephen Frears and screenwriter Peter Morgan. However, they sporadically say something amusing or worth listening to.
Frears mentions he shot the queen's sequences in 35 millimeter and Tony Blair's in 16 to emphasize the royal versus commoner aspects of the movie. Also, they tell what locations were used — for example, the gardens at Waddesdon stood in for those at Buckingham Palace even though they're dissimilar — and Frears claims, "At no point in this film did we ever shoot in the right place." But audiences generally bought the world created in the movie, and as Morgan astutely observes, "Truth and accuracy are completely different things."
Frears and Morgan make some entertaining remarks about the early showings of The Queen. They say that the scene where Blair actually kisses the queen's hand got a huge laugh in Vienna. At the L.A. premiere, there was deafening laughter when Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman are shown attending Diana's funeral. And the most popular line in the film is where Elizabeth's husband Prince Philip (James Cromwell) climbs into bed with the queen, saying to her, "Come on, move over, cabbage."
Scholarly Audio Commentary by Historian and Royal Expert
Also on the DVD is a second feature-length audio commentary, this one by historian Robert Lacey, who has studied the royal family for 30 years and has written several books, including Majesty and Monarch. He is lively and well-organized as he furnishes a wealth of historical detail.
Lacey says that "the succession of men [Diana] chose was disastrous," and that the British press was extremely critical of the "playgirl princess" until her sudden death when she immediately became "Saint Diana." He also claims it was Diana's 1995 BBC interview with Martin Bashir, part of which is inserted into the movie, that provoked the final rupture between the queen and the princess.
On several occasions, Lacey points out places where the film takes liberties with the known facts. For example, in the movie Blair constitutionally advises Elizabeth to take certain specific steps, but the historian says things never went that far in real life. According to Lacey, if the prime minister had done that, it would have had the effect of an order which the queen would have had no choice but to obey. In theory, if the prime minister presents the queen with her death warrant and tells her it's her constitutional duty to sign it, she has to do so.
DVD Details
Below I've listed the details for the DVD containing The Queen.
Release Date: April 24, 2007
Widescreen (1.85:1), Color
Feature Film Run Time: 1 hour 43 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for Brief Strong Language
English 5.1 Dolby Digital
Spanish 2.0 Dolby Stereo
English Captions for the Hearing Impaired
Spanish Subtitles
Audio Commentary by Director and Screenwriter
Audio Commentary by Historian
The Making of The Queen (20 minutes)
Return to Beginning of Review
About.com Rating
A Short, Serviceable Making-Of
The Queen DVD contains a making-of that runs less than 20 minutes. It's workaday, but it gives us a chance to see some of film's crew and hear from the principal cast members out of character. In the most interesting parts, Helen Mirren talks about getting into the role of a famous, enigmatic woman who was still living. The actress says it relaxed her to think of herself as a painter doing a portrait of the queen.
Mirren also states that before each shot, she would move her arm back past her face, then extend it straight out in front of her. That represented for her the way Elizabeth dealt with the world — she would go back into herself, a confident place, full of self-discipline and self-control, and then come out of herself in a straight, steady line.
Audio Commentary by Director and Screenwriter
The DVD provides a jokey and disorganized feature-length audio commentary by director Stephen Frears and screenwriter Peter Morgan. However, they sporadically say something amusing or worth listening to.
Frears mentions he shot the queen's sequences in 35 millimeter and Tony Blair's in 16 to emphasize the royal versus commoner aspects of the movie. Also, they tell what locations were used — for example, the gardens at Waddesdon stood in for those at Buckingham Palace even though they're dissimilar — and Frears claims, "At no point in this film did we ever shoot in the right place." But audiences generally bought the world created in the movie, and as Morgan astutely observes, "Truth and accuracy are completely different things."
Frears and Morgan make some entertaining remarks about the early showings of The Queen. They say that the scene where Blair actually kisses the queen's hand got a huge laugh in Vienna. At the L.A. premiere, there was deafening laughter when Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman are shown attending Diana's funeral. And the most popular line in the film is where Elizabeth's husband Prince Philip (James Cromwell) climbs into bed with the queen, saying to her, "Come on, move over, cabbage."
Scholarly Audio Commentary by Historian and Royal Expert
Also on the DVD is a second feature-length audio commentary, this one by historian Robert Lacey, who has studied the royal family for 30 years and has written several books, including Majesty and Monarch. He is lively and well-organized as he furnishes a wealth of historical detail.
Lacey says that "the succession of men [Diana] chose was disastrous," and that the British press was extremely critical of the "playgirl princess" until her sudden death when she immediately became "Saint Diana." He also claims it was Diana's 1995 BBC interview with Martin Bashir, part of which is inserted into the movie, that provoked the final rupture between the queen and the princess.
On several occasions, Lacey points out places where the film takes liberties with the known facts. For example, in the movie Blair constitutionally advises Elizabeth to take certain specific steps, but the historian says things never went that far in real life. According to Lacey, if the prime minister had done that, it would have had the effect of an order which the queen would have had no choice but to obey. In theory, if the prime minister presents the queen with her death warrant and tells her it's her constitutional duty to sign it, she has to do so.
DVD Details
Below I've listed the details for the DVD containing The Queen.
Release Date: April 24, 2007
Widescreen (1.85:1), Color
Feature Film Run Time: 1 hour 43 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for Brief Strong Language
English 5.1 Dolby Digital
Spanish 2.0 Dolby Stereo
English Captions for the Hearing Impaired
Spanish Subtitles
Audio Commentary by Director and Screenwriter
Audio Commentary by Historian
The Making of The Queen (20 minutes)
Return to Beginning of Review