Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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38 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
Queen Victoria - the woman behind the Majesty, 13 Feb 2004
My picture of Queen Victoria was very much that of a an small, old lady, quite fat, her hands covered in rings, of course dressed all in black with a white lace veil and always in mourning her husband, tyrannising her family and government and nevertheless the longest reigning and most imposing monarch ever to sit on Britain's throne. Every actress who embarks on the enterprise to play the role of Queen Victoria will have to deal with the general public's perception of the Queen and at the same time show us "the real Victoria". Dame Judy Dench manages this in this excellent movie.The film takes us into the 1860s, as Victoria was inconsolable after the death of her beloved husband, ahs retired from the world. She sends for her late husband favourite gillie, Mr. Brown who mange to bring her back to the world of the living. These unusual platonic friendship between the mighty Queen of the British Empire and a mere Scottish servant shows us that Queen Victoria was a woman who needed to be taken care of, needed a man at her side she could entirely trust and a shoulder to lean on. The movie shows us that she was an emotional fragile person and at the same time a female monarch who in a male dominated society manage to hold everybody in awe. By taking a Scottish gillie as her trusted friend, she defied all conventions...in the Victorian area which seems to me all convention... Maybe Queen Victoria was perhaps less conventional than public perception makes her out? The story is very touching and one understands more about this side of the "old Queen" as through any biography. The actors are superb - Dame Judi Dench should have earned Oscar for her spot-on portrayal of the troubled Queen Victoria. She got it only two years later for her repeat, but not as impressive royal performances as Queen Elizabeth in two 1999 films. I am sure that you will enjoy this film!! Not one single moment of boredom, a well told story and excellent acting.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
"I think I am someone who can only feel things when they are alive to me.", 8 Oct 2006
After Prince Albert died in 1859, his memory was so alive to Queen Victoria, and her mourning for him was so dramatic that she virtually retired from the throne. Three years after Prince Albert's death, while the Queen was living in seclusion at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, John Brown was hired to tend her horses. A rough, virile man, far more accustomed to life in the wild than in royal castles, Brown treated the queen with respect, but he also treated her as a fellow human being, refusing to obey court etiquette while encouraging her to improve her health and spirits by riding in the hills. In time, he came to be her confidante, so much so that the royal family became alarmed at their relationship and members of Parliament began referring to her, mockingly, as "Mrs. Brown."
Judi Dench, in one of her best roles, is a wonderfully sympathetic Queen Victoria--haughty with those who try to control her, angry with those who cross her, and vulnerable to someone like Brown, who understands her loneliness and is determined to protect her. Billy Connolly is perfect as John Brown--rough, craggy-faced, full of life, and unafraid to tell the queen exactly what he thinks, a trait the queen comes to respect. Scenes between them show the queen in all her reserve slowly responding to Brown's honesty and inherent charm, and though there was no affair (though all the film publicity suggests otherwise), the depth of their emotional attachment is obvious.
Filmed on location in the Scottish highlands in 1998, this production features wonderfully intimate scenes of everyday royal life, including the full retinue of servants and ladies-in-waiting, the queen's enormous family, the impatient Prince of Wales, and many luminaries of history--especially Benjamin Disraeli (Antony Sher) and Lord Henry Ponsonby (Geoffrey Palmer), both of whom try to act in the queen's best interests while also protecting their own. As the queen responds to Mr. Brown's care, the slow, subtle effects on her everyday life become clear to the viewer through the remarkably acted scenes between Dench and Connolly. Dench won many Best Actress awards for her role here, and Connolly was nominated for an almost equal number for his role.
A gorgeous costume drama with a large cast, the film focuses on just two people--Dench and Connolly, both of whom are so overwhelming in their roles that everything else becomes peripheral. Mary Whipple
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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
Moving evocation of a monarch/servant relationship, 26 Nov 2000
By A Customer
After the death of her husband Prince Albert, Queen Victoria shuts herself off from society and becomes a virtual recluse. The ghillie John Brown is brought down from Scotland (a place that both the Queen and her husband loved) to draw the Queen out of her mourning and take her riding. Their relationship develops until the Queen (Judi Dench) begins to rely rather too much on the presence of Brown (Billy Connolly) much to the consternation of her family and ministers. Both Dench and Connolly turn in superb and truthful performances giving the full subtext to the script which is quite rightly constrained by the language of the times. But we, the audience are left in no doubt as to the depth of feeling between the two protagonists. Antony Sher is outstanding as Benjamin Disraeli, his expression when he first hears Brown address the Queen as "woman" is to be treasured. A must see.
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