Word: victoria
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...films with eyes for Oscar, or laden with critics awards the past week, Nine, A Single Man, The Young Victoria, Crazy Heart and The Lovely Bones all did moderate business in a handful of theaters. Fantastic Mr. Fox, the stop-motion animated feature that picked up awards this past week from the New York and L.A. film critics' groups, actually dropped 57% in ticket sales; the power of the press continues to be impotent. The critics' darlings, if they're to gain traction at all, must wait for the free publicity they may receive from next month's Golden Globe...
...Duchess and her "adviser" (in both boudoir and boardroom), the glowering Sir John Conroy (Mark Strong), try to strong-arm Victoria into signing over her power to her mother, just in case King William dies before she turns 18. We want her to be Queen so she can finally say, "Off with his head." Conroy is the film's only outright villain, but he's not really much source of tension: once she's Queen, she's the boss. Nor are Lord M. or Lehzen, even though they try to manipulate the young Queen, because this is primarily a love...
...wild love story for both parties? It can be a challenge to trust historical dramas. We're so used to being duped that even while we're enjoying a scene, we may think it's all made up. The Young Victoria features the jolly King William at his birthday banquet, quite in his cups, trashing Victoria's mother. It's a funny bit, ending with Richardson huffing off and some dry old man saying, ruefully, "Families." This scene has the mark of something written expressly for Broadbent by Fellowes, but in Lytton Strachey's biography Queen Victoria, and again...
...also less gushy and girlish (Romy Schneider covered that ground in 1954's Victoria in Dover). Victoria left ample and surprisingly intimate diaries, as well as her sketchbooks, which provided evidence of her platonic infatuation with Lord M. (she mostly got misty-eyed over the idea of him as a young man) and her nearly instantaneous attraction to her cousin Albert, whom she described as "extremely handsome ... he has a beautiful nose and a very sweet mouth" - which is certainly true of Friend...
...perhaps in deference to the contemporary audience's desire to see Victoria as a Queen shaping her own destiny, the movie tilts the balance of romantic power somewhat, giving us a Victoria gradually won over by Albert's attentions. He grumbles to his brother about the political nature of the courtship ("What do you say about a man who waits for a rich woman?"), but he's soon got the mushy look of a man more than ready to fulfill his duty. The suggestion is that he'll offer her an alliance of equals. Discussing the subject of husbands...