Did anyone else got a bit amazed on how negatively Prince Phillip and The Queen Mother were portrayed in this movie? They really come across as super snotty and judgemental in this. I remember watching Cromwell's performance and going "What a jerk!" from time to time.
Even if there may be quite some accurateness to it, it still impressed me. It was a bold move to display their characters in that way.
I don't think the filmmakers intended to portray Prince Philip and the Queen Mother negatively but more as a comic relief. Prince Philip is famous for speaking as he finds and the Queen Mother was naturally a firm member of the old guard who didn't take gladly to the nonsense the British public was displaying at the time of the film's events.
It's the times, what can we do...
Prince Philip was at frantic odds with Diana at the end of her life. Emphasize the "frantic". She was seeing a Muslim man in public. Really bothered the Royal Family, that. In fact, PPhilip had written her a very terse and demanding letter regarding her behavior, that freaked her out so much that she had her barrister answer it. (I always thought he might have arranged to "just get rid of her"....but we will never know.) She did not cease her activities, as he requested.
I think the portrayal of him in this film is probably very accurate: disdainful, cold, and unsentimental. After all, his sisters all married Nazi Officers. By the age of 7, he lost his mother to a mental institution (schizophrenia), his father abandoned him for Monte Carlo, and little Philip was sent off to a severe boarding school for boys. He sent Prince Charles there, later, and poor Prince Charles wrote letters begging to come home, it was such a cold and dreary place.
I have no sympathy for Prince Philip. He is a very cold person, whatever the reason.
And I am sure, at the end, he hated Diana.
I didn't find them particularly negative. They seemed quite down to earth and sensible to me.
shareI watch this and think of The King's Speech. She is in it too played by Helena Bonham Carter and I have to laugh a bit think of the two women and how they were so much alike in the character of her. ( I don't know if that came out right, but anyways). Prince Phillip seems to be a reserved Englishman, who care about hunting, and The Queen and little else. 😀
shareI didn’t think Prince Phillip or the Queen Mother were intended to be viewed negatively. They were the standard bearers for what they viewed as the traditional British values-the kind of stiff upper lip, keep calm and carry on behavior that characterized Britain through WWII and the subsequent years.
The film is really a look at a transitional moment where the old values have to give way to public sentiment. The Queen could either follow Blair/Charles calls for a more humane approach or she could remain in the old ways advocated by her husband and mother.
I thought the film showed that the Queen did not particularly understand or for that matter value the emotional response, but she recognized as the monarch it was necessary to those needs regardless of her own feelings. The film is not really about the Queen personally changing, it’s about the monarchy as a whole recognizing the need for change and trying to adapt to those needs.