*** (out of ****)
Starring Dame Judi Dench and Billy Connolly
Directed by John Madden & written by Jeremy Brock
1997 R
We can’t get what we want all the time and, in fact, we are often better, happier people for it, when we strive for some things and resign ourselves to others. That is the revelation of “Mrs. Brown,” an elegant little film chronicling the relationship between a recently-widowed Queen Victoria (Dame Judi Dench) and her late husband’s horse attendant, John Brown (Billy Connolly). The film is titled Mrs. Brown not because Victoria and Brown ever married or even had an affair, but because their friendship and confidence became so close and well-known.
The entwined dramatic arcs of “Mrs. Brown” find the Queen in the odd predicament of being a prisoner to servants and ministers who always give her her way and never speak their minds, and of being in endless mourning. The atmosphere in her summer-castle is constantly stifled and regulated by decorum, and she’s miserable. Along comes Scotsman Brown, who stands up to her, who will not simply let her always get her way, and he becomes a reminder of what her husband had been to her, and how two people cannot simply be master-and-servant but equals. His devotion to her begins as admirable, then borders on the obsessive as he begins to turn her into a recluse, even to the point of physically pushing away her son, and she learns the opposite lesson that sometimes she must be master. Along the way there are political intrigues involving Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli that I’m sure are simplified for the sake of the film’s strong thematic lines, and the friendship between Brown and Victoria is tested not only from the inside, but by members of both their families, political pressure, and ridicule in the popular press. “She’ll drop you,” Brown’s brother warns him, “because in the end you’re just a servant.” By the end we discover this is the film’s central conflict, and not what slings and arrows come from outside their dyad.
The performances of Dench and Connolly are effortless and natural; Dench looks more like royalty than most real queens do. Her character wants and wants, almost childishly at times, behind a veneer of absolute propriety. Connolly is perhaps even more interesting because his motives for such devotion are cloudy; he himself is not even sure why he is so faithful. Director John Madden (director of “Shakespeare in Love” as well as one of the BBC’s “Prime Suspect” series) is clean and efficient with what is obviously an actors movie. Landscapes are lush in the winter and glow golden in the autumn, but never at the expense of the characters, and the same can be said of the giant halls of affluence, with their period décor and scores of scurrying servants. Attention is paid, but not lavished, on the operation of the queen’s house, and we understand the frustration she must feel at being unable to go anywhere with a trio of servants, or doors being opened for her, and what a breath of fresh air Brown must have been. The film is not much concerned with the precise details of the politics and details of running a government, because the conflict between what we want to do and what we should do, which is what “Mrs. Brown” is really about, is more universal than whatever diplomatic or internal squabbles Britain was suffering at the time.
Finished April 28, 2002
Copyright 2002 Friday & Saturday Night