VICTORIA and ABDUL (2017)
Directed by Stephen
Frears
Focus Pictures,
111minutes, PG-13
★½
Someone should make a film about how Queen Victoria was more
than a puritanical prude during her 63-plus years on the British throne
(1837-1901). Oh wait, somebody already did that twenty years ago. Is it time to
do it again? Nope!
Victoria (1819-1901) was just 18 when she was crowned and
had not reached 22 when she married her first cousin, Albert of Saxe-Colburg,
in 1840. Theirs was a loving and fruitful marriage that produced nine children
before Albert died suddenly in 1861, shortly after traveling to Italy to
admonish their eldest child, Edward (“Bertie”), who was engaged in a scandalous
dalliance with an actress. The queen never forgave Bertie and spent the
remaining 61 years of her life in resentment and mourning. In fact, she came to
thoroughly dislike all of her children, whom she saw—with considerable merit—as
pampered, conniving, and amoral. History labels the latter half of the 19th
century the “Victorian Age,” and associates it with dour temperaments, moral
rectitude, social scripting, and affected seriousness.
Not surprisingly, Victoria’s private life wasn’t entirely up
to code. She had confidants and particularly enjoyed spending time in royal
residences outside of Greater London, especially Scotland. After Albert’s death
she found comfort in John Brown, her Scottish footman, who served her from 1863
until his death in 1883. There were even rumors that the two were lovers, but
these seem to have been circulated by her family and courtiers jealous that
Victoria paid them little heed. Those who’ve seen director John Madden’s acclaimed
1997 film Mrs. Brown with Billy
Connolly as Brown and Judi Dench as Queen Victoria know this story.
In 1876, Victoria also became Empress of India, courtesy of
British imperialism. In Victoria and
Abdul, Dench reprises her role as Victoria. Stephen Frears’ film is
basically a sequel to Mrs. Brown—just
not a very good one. It opens in 1887, when two Indian Muslims travel to
England to present Victoria with a ceremonial coin commemorating her 50th
year on the throne. By then Victoria had grown zaftig, tired, bored with the
throne, and disgusted with the hangers on at court. Small wonder she found
Abdul (Ali Fazal) exotic in all the right ways; he was tall, kind, polished,
and in awe of Her Majesty. We see the two grow together as friends, with
Victoria appointing him her “Munshi” (teacher) for lessons in Urdu and the
Qur’an. She even contemplated giving him a knighthood. The court was
scandalized.
This really happened. Perhaps it would have made a good
movie. But Frears has essentially taken the kilt off John Brown, put a turban
on his head, and replaced the brogue with Southeast Asian-accented English. All
the elements are there from Madden’s film: sniveling patronage seekers, a
playboy Bertie, upper-class snobbery, and racism.
As for the racism, it often seemed as if the entire point of
imperialism was to conquer new peoples the English could despise and belittle.
You can easily imagine what people who racialized the Irish and Scots thought
of the dark-skinned Abdul and Muhammad, who accompanied him, or Abduls’
burqa-wearing wife and mother-in-law. Still, one of the many problems in Victoria and Abdul arises when Frears
populates the picture with deplorables: Bertie (Eddie Izzard), Sir Henry Ponsby
(Tim Pigott-Smith), Lord Salisbury (Michael Gambon), Dr. James Reid (Paul
Higgins), Baroness Churchill (Olivia Spencer), and on and on. There are just
two sympathetic individuals: our titular characters. Others probably were this awful, but under Frears’
misdirection our antagonists are mere twits with less depth than cardboard
cutouts.
Frears compounds the problem by striking an unneeded
semi-burlesque tone. Aristocracy has a way of lampooning itself without the
addition of freighted clownish demeanors that invite bemusement rather than
outrage. Frears adds other puzzling touches. What was he thinking when he cast
Simon Callow as Puccini and then uses him solely to set up Dench’s atonal
attempt at a few measures of Gilbert and Sullivan? Such light-hearted moments
serve mainly to blunt the full force of things we’re supposed to take
seriously: Britain’s plunder of India, Abdul’s personal burdens, the
anachronistic nature of monarchy, ethnocentrism…. In essence, Victoria and Abdul plays like any of a
number of British East-meets-West comedy/dramas that proliferate like midges.
Frears doesn’t even seem to know how he wants to portray
Abdul—as an exotic, a sycophant, a mesmerist, a tragic victim, or just another
schemer who’s better at it than English lickspittles. Oh, I forgot; Abdul also
plays travel agent. Be prepared for your Wikipedia lesson on the Taj Mahal. The
whole film is as boring as English noble nabobs. Like most second acts, Victoria and Abdul is vacuous and
forgettable.
Rob Weir
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