The Queen Poster
Interview With Stephen Frears on The Queen
“Because you're making a film about a woman who famously doesn’t display her feelings, doesn’t wear them on her sleeve, doesn’t make a fetish of them, this is not a good place to start from when you're making a film, where the character herself sort of makes a business of being unknowable,” said Frears. “So frequently we would find that in the writing, you would have to in the previous scenes explain the story as it were and then Helen didn’t have to do any explaining for herself because the character wouldn’t explain. That’s always a problem in films.”
Any biopic manipulates history for drama, and no one can know some of the private conversations that take place in the film. But even the Brits give The Queen high praise for its reporting. “You're certainly serving two masters. You’re trying to make a story and constructing it and dealing with the things that making a historical film always involves. And you're also trying to create a plausible account of the events. Truth is anyway very, very mysterious. There are things in the film that are known which are true which I regret. So truth is a complicated thing, so imagination is more interesting. What we’ve learned from the response to the film in England, we sort of got it right.”
One well known moment that is not addressed in the film is when the royal family stood outside watching Diana’s hearse drive by. This was due to simply practical matters. “I was keen to put that in. There were two television stations covered it. ITV missed the shot. ITV, for whom we were making the film, missed the shot. The BBC got the shot. The BBC then are terrified of losing their relationship with the palace, so the BBC stopped me using it. When you point out to them that you are actually paying the queen a compliment, they fail to understand what you’re talking about. So don’t blame me, blame the BBC. To be fair, that was the only incident and it was just unfortunate the ITV camera was behind the car so you didn’t actually see the event.”
Most of the Diana footage comes from news tapes, however they hired a lookalike to recreate the scene of her dodging paparazzi in Paris. There was more lookalike footage shot but for some reason that became more of a distraction than other actors playing known figures. “When we shot the Paris sequence, we did actually have a lookalike and you see the top of her head. She did look rather like her, particularly one profile. But as soon as you put a shot in of her, that was all people were interested in. Does she look like her? The film collapsed at that point because everyone watching just became obsessed with the degree of whether she looked like her, whether she didn’t. That was the only subject for discussion, which arises with none of the other people. Nobody sits around saying, ‘Does Alex look like Charles?’ They just sort of get on with it. But at that precise moment, that was all people were interested in.”
The young princes play very minor roles in the film as Frears felt it was not appropriate to analyze their reactions to events. “It seemed to me, in the end, two children lost their mother. That’s where you draw the line.”
The Queen has a wide release this Friday, October 6th.
For the trailer, clips and more movie info, go to The Queen Movie Page.
Stay tuned for updates.
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