Victoria, still the reigning Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the Empress of India, is in loneliness a lonely woman. Bearing the weight of the festooned crown for over six decades, she has seen the death of loved once and has ever cared for. Sitting at the head of a long table of personages, she eats her meal in irreverence for the typical gesticulation of a royalty. The innovation and adrenaline of power have long worn off, and death rebuffs to knock her door. She expects no camaraderie, yet finds solidarity in an Indian man, much younger to her, whose perspectives on life introduce meaning into her own.
Stephen Frears’ film is based on this factual story. Or ‘mostly’, as the screen reads at the beginning of the movie. If the filmmaker was at the liberty to pick parts of the actual events, he should have limited himself to exploration of the unpredicted friendship between the two leading. The problem arises when the film looks into the intolerable aspect of this friendship, taking the story into dark alleyways of racism, post-colonial guilt and exoticism of the Orient.
Victoria & Abdul
Director: Stephen Frears
Cast: Judi Dench, Ali Fazal, Eddie Izzard, Tim Pigott-Smith, Adeel Akhtar
Story line: Queen Victoria fights against her family and staff to set up a friendship with an Indian footman
The film, in its hurry to Queen Victoria of any cultural discrimination and lionize her as a wise and woke Empress, skims through critical moments that lay the basis for Victoria and Abdul’s relationship. Instead all you get are quick pigeonhole and truism, which make Abdul seem like a guide taking a white lady around Chandi Chowk. You are dished out representative images of bazaars in Agra and the Taj Mahal. Abdul’s words of wisdom are evocative of a fortune teller in a small-town mela. The rest of the British cast spews lines like, “He’s teaching her Hindu”. To which another responds, “No, it’s Urdu, the Muslim version”. Abdul in England is an oddity, we get it. But the film often pushes the point to a cringeworthy extent.
Frears – who has previously dealt with both, the royalty and Judi Dench, in The Queen (2006) and Philomena (2013) respectively – lends Victoria a sense dignity inquietude. Dench is unguarded and evocative, especially when she breaks down in Abdul’s company. She makes even the most stoic characters vulnerable. Ali Fazal as Abdul is visibly unable to reciprocate to Dench’s artistry. He masks his emotions behind perpetual smiles and feigns sincerity.
In this lush and sanitized period drama, humor is what works best. For a story centered on the emotional interdependence of two people, moments of laughter, sorrow, longing, loneliness, empathy, wisdom and affection are supreme. Instead of attempting a political saga with very little historical evidence to bank on, had the film been about the mutual discovery and separation of two individuals, Frears would’ve walked away with a film both elevating and distressing.
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