Victoria and Abdul (PG)
We have passed the stage where it was fair to say that Dame Judi Dench was born to play Queen Victoria. I think we might now venture that Queen Victoria was born to be played by Judi Dench.
At any rate, the 82-year-old great dame is on truly glorious form in Victoria and Abdul, which is a pleasing companion piece for Mrs Brown, John Madden’s delightful 1997 film starring Dench and Billy Connolly – about the relationship between the Queen and her Scottish manservant John Brown.
Victoria and Abdul chronicles another, later relationship between Victoria and a devoted servant. But whereas many of us had at least some hazy awareness of John Brown even before Connolly played him to such memorable effect, this picture tells (albeit with plenty of artistic licence) a true story that is much less well known.
We have passed the stage where it was fair to say that Dame Judi Dench was born to play Queen Victoria
Directed by Stephen Frears, it begins in the Indian city of Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, in 1887. Abdul Karim (the Bollywood star Ali Fazal) is a lowly clerk, selected for no better reason than that he’s tall and handsome, to travel to England to present a ceremonial coin to the Queen, as part of her Golden Jubilee celebrations.
Also chosen to make the trip is his friend Muhammed (played mainly for laughs by Adeel Akhtar), who in a subversion of racist attitudes in Victorian times, tells Abdul that England is ‘completely barbaric’.
He’s even heard the English eat pigs’ blood. At Osborne House, the Queen’s beloved home on the Isle of Wight, Abdul is instructed to ‘process, turn, bow, present … absolutely no eye contact whatsoever’.
The presentation of the coin has brought him all the way from India, but it is to last only seconds, and receiving it is but one of dozens of duties the Queen has to perform that day.
I think we might now venture that Queen Victoria was born to be played by Judi Dench
Besides, she is far more interested in stuffing herself with food. Dench, Frears and screenwriter Lee Hall have huge, uproarious fun with Victoria’s notorious gluttony. The film is worth seeing for one dinner scene alone, and for the solemn interest in the Queen’s digestive system.
‘It is imperative the royal colon receives a little roughage,’ says her physician.
Against all the odds, however, Abdul and Victoria do lock eyes, and there is an instant connection. Paradoxically, the woman who gave her name to the age is not prey to Victorian prejudices. Moreover, she has deeply romantic notions about the sub-continent, which she rules but has never visited, and here is dishy Abdul, embodying them.
Soon, he has been made her “munshi”, or teacher, to the increasing exasperation of most of those around her, led by her son, the Prince of Wales (Eddie Izzard, oyster-eyed and over the top).
As Abdul teaches the Queen Hindi and charms her with his rather strained aphorisms – ‘life is like a carpet, we weave in and out to make a pattern’ – a thinly-disguised racism grips the Royal Household.
Directed by Stephen Frears, it begins in the Indian city of Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, in 1887
A word is coined: Munshimania. But Munshiphobia is closer to the truth. A Scottish ghillie was one thing, but at least Brown knew his place. Abdul, it seems, does not. When the Queen declares that she’s planning to give him a knighthood, there is uproar.
Even her loyal private secretary Sir Henry Ponsonby (one of the last screen roles for the late Tim Pigott-Smith) supports a rebellion by the Household, while the Prince of Wales threatens to have her declared insane.
This is the cue for an epic speech by Victoria, in which she admits to all her foibles but thunders that she also has all her marbles.
Dench, in unflinching close-up, delivers it spectacularly.
Abdul Karim (the Bollywood star Ali Fazal) is a lowly clerk, selected for no better reason than that he’s tall and handsome, to travel to England to present a ceremonial coin to the Queen, as part of her Golden Jubilee celebrations
And she gets sterling support throughout, with a top-notch British cast also graced by Sir Michael Gambon (as the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury), Simon Callow (playing the composer, Puccini) and Olivia Williams (Baroness Churchill).
But the film is almost as manipulative as, by all reliable accounts, Abdul was himself.
It one-dimensionally depicts the Queen’s advisers as a bunch of blithering snobs and fools, and her Munshi as a gentle sweetheart. It alludes to, but largely swerves, the fact that he was arrogant, deceitful, and intensely ambitious.
Still, it’s clear that he genuinely adored the Queen and she him. That part of the story is beautifully told, and Dench manifestly loves telling it.
- Victoria and Abdul comes out on September 15