Indeed, not understanding that paradox is what gets the film's royal family in trouble. The Windsors have lived so long in a cage of symbolism they no longer see the bars.
Part of the People magazine-style guilty pleasure of ``The Queen," of course, is that it lets us peep behind the closed doors of Buckingham Palace and Balmoral Castle as the royal family copes with the aftermath of the death of Lady Diana Spencer -- the national paroxysm of mourning, the mounting outrage over Queen Elizabeth's refusal to make official gestures of grief. I can't think of any other movie that has dared (or stooped to) what this one does: a fictional portrait of still-sitting heads of state, with characters we know from the sides of coins chewing over private anxieties at breakfast and in boudoirs.
True, maybe Prince Philip (James Cromwell ) didn't look at news footage of the young Diana at her wedding and mutter, ``She was a nice girl. Then," but it's extremely amusing to think so. It's possibly even revelatory.
Frears and Morgan keep the action to one week in early September 1997 , during which the Windsors and their subjects sharply diverged. Caught between the two like Wile E. Coyote straddling trains headed in opposite directions is the newly elected Prime Minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen ), who's at first as appalled as anyone over the queen's cluelessness. ``Will someone please save these people from themselves?" he moans, shortly before realizing that that someone will have to be him.
