Taking a revisionist tone of ridiculing British monarchy’s inner circle, riddled with ingrained racism, snobbish abomination and unrelieved hostility towards Abdul Karim (Fazal), the Indian munshi(native language teacher) of Queen Victoria (Dench) and her confident,yet also repeatedly showing Abdul’s blind subservience (kissing the Queen’s foot)to appease the backlash of colonialism, Stephen Frears’ period drama VICTORIA & ABDUL seems to enmesh itself within a mean-spirited conundrum, where should we put the toehold of our sympathy? Victoria or Abdul? Either, perhaps.
Exactly two decades after John Madden’s MRS. BROWN (1997), Dame Judi Dench reprises the role which has kick-started her unprecedented and unparalleled silver-screen surge when she was mere a sexagenarian, it would only be too perfect for the film to scoop her a second Oscar which she truly deserves (so that she can finally be abreast with another Dame Ms. Smith in terms of Oscar glory). Her performance here is both as one expects, stately, lucid-minded and poignantly heads-turning, but there is also something quite unexpected, the loneliness, world-weary pathos of a senile monarch, who doesn’t have one single ally in her regal domicile and perennially encircled by lackeys, fussbudgets and a son hot to trot of her throne, which makes an accountable excuse for her last petulance.
Frears makes sure it is Dench’s star vehicle first and foremost, dutifully hits every rung of character arc to flesh out a ruler’s physical atrophy, mental slackness (her ignorance of Indian Mutiny is appalling for her position), dignified resilience and heartfelt elation all cloistered in the immurement concomitant with power, duty and all those exterior glamorous trimmings. The“I’m anything but insane” reprimand segment could be her Oscar-clip but she must fight tooth and nail to get that nomination in the cutting-throat Oscar race, especially her chance is significantly undercut by the film’s below-par status as a serious awards contender.
Another defective factor is the characterization of Abdul, which abhorrently pales in comparison as if he is just a piece of exotica, good-looking enough to catch Queen’s weary eyes, to say nothing of the thinly-veiled racism through the gonorrhea placement, which is as horrid the one-noted attribute of the repugnant household. Woe betide those who fail to live up to Dench’s first-class craft, including the screenwriter Lee Hall and the journeyman Stephen Frears, the unwitting saboteurs of an 84-year-older’s tailor-made crowning piece.
referential points: John Madden’s MRS. BROWM (1997, 6.4/10); Frears' PHILOMENA (2013, 8.6/10), FLORENCE FOSTER JENKINS (2016, 7.5/10).
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