Victoria and Abdul ★★★
THE great Judy Dench dominates Victoria and Abdul and is the main reason to see this story set during the final years of Queen Victoria’s reign.
At 83, Dench has been acting for six decades and chooses her roles very wisely, providing wide variety across several genres.
This is the second time she has played this famous Royal and the film could be considered a sequel of sorts to 1997’s Mrs Brown, for which she received an Academy Award presentation.
This time the performance and film aren’t as good, mainly due to an imbalanced script and tone, but will no doubt again prove a crowd-pleaser for her legion of fans and lovers of light, period-based entertainment.
It’s 1887, the Queen’s jubilee year and, as part of the celebrations, gifts are being presented to the monarch from all reaches of the Empire, including India where two lowly public servants are ordered to take a commemorative coin to England.
One is Abdul Karim, a young clerk at a local prison who appears to have been selected purely because he is tall. At the presentation the striking Karim makes a fleeting impression on the bored monarch who requests that he also wait on her the following day.
At that encounter Karim demonstrates a welcoming, new and enthusiastic presence that interests Victoria. Karim is respectful but is also not overawed to the point of wariness and strict civility like the rest of her staff.
Against the wishes of her senior counsellors she decides to formalise the visiting Indians’ duties to the ultimate progression of Karim’s family also coming to England and him becoming her ‘Munshi’, an Urdu term for a teacher or guide.
Karim instructs her in the history, culture and language of his homeland and becomes a confidant. Along the way their relationship is challenged by the ongoing political tensions between India and Britain, manifested in the personal jealousies and organised plotting of the Royal household.
Director Stephen Frears is a story-teller at heart and is particularly interested in the personal circumstances surrounding real events. Back in the 1980s he first shot to fame with a trio of stunning dramas, Prick Up Your Ears, My Beautiful Laundrette (in which he introduced us to Daniel Day Lewis) and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid.
High Fidelity and Dangerous Liaisons were terrific highlights in a quieter period but, in recent years, he has had another resurgence with Florence Foster Jenkins, Philomena, The Queen and The Program.
The wonderful Philomena from 2013 is the stand-out, thanks to terrific performances and script. And it’s in the script that I feel films like The Program, which focused on competitive cycling cheat Lance Armstrong, and Victoria and Abdul suffer a little.
In the case of Victoria and Abdul, the human components of the international drama are not given the treatment they deserve. Granted, it is a film with comic moments, but ultimately it is trying to depict the complexities of a relationship that sought to transcend the conflict between nations and cultures.
Karim’s motivations are generally clear, but those of Queen Victoria are not. Maybe that was the reality, but the script fails to explain it adequately.
So go to see Victoria and Abdul solely for the wonderful performances, headed by the towering Dench but also featuring entertaining turns from seasoned actors in Eddie Izzard as Bertie, the Prince of Wales, Tim Piggott-Smith as the head of the Royal Household, Adel Akhbar, Olivia Williams and Michael Gambon.
You can imagine every one of them comfortably inhabiting the actual characters.