Victoria & Abdul (5 Stars)

For me this was one of the biggest surprise hits of 2017. I expected it to be good, but I was bowled over by just how good it was.

One of the film's greatest strengths is the atmosphere. We're propelled into the atmosphere of Britain in the 19th Century which is outwardly glorious but inwardly dull. Queen Victoria is celebrating her golden jubilee in 1887, one of the greatest days in her career, but she's bored and wishes it would all go away. Her servants have to wake her in the morning so that she can go about her many appointments that have been planned meticulously by her personal secretary. She has no control over her own life. When Abdul tells her that the purpose of her life is service he's telling her something she should have known already. She's seemingly the ruler of the world's greatest empire, but in truth she's the empire's servant, and she can only become happy when she accepts her role.

When 24-year-old Abdul arrives from India the Queen's life lights up. Even though their relationship is platonic there's an atmosphere of romance between them. It's a romance that can never be. Apart from the age difference, they could never be together because they're from two different worlds. They're both servants, but they're very different kinds of servants. Added to this is the fact that Abdul is already married. In one of the film's most poignant scenes Judi Dench proves her brilliance as an actress. She always assumed he was single, but when he tells her he has a wife the disappointment flashes across her face before she composes herself and puts on the stoic face that is becoming for a monarch.

The film shows a very different Victoria to the one that is presented in photographs and history books. The Victoria that I know from growing up as an Englishman is a stern woman who never smiled. She was even more aloof than Queen Elisabeth, the current monarch. That's the Victoria that we see at the beginning of the film. After meeting Abdul we see a new Victoria, a woman who loves life. She develops a passion for new hobbies, such as learning Urdu. It was a pleasant surprise for me to find out that for the last ten years of her life she wrote her personal diary in Urdu. What a fascinating women she must have been!

The film has nothing good to say about Victoria's son Bertie, who went on to succeed her as King Edward VII. He's described as selfish, looking out for his own interests. He embodies none of the characteristics of servitude that are so important to his mother. Like the other members of the elite who spend most of their time idling in the palace, he's jealous of Abdul. He doesn't understand how someone from a common background can be so close to his mother. He's a racist, but more than that he looks down on the lower classes. I don't know which of the two is worse. A person's class and his race are both things he's born with and can't change. (An educated person can hide his class background by lying about it, but if he's found out he'll be despised even more).

This is a brilliant film. It's amazing that it could ever have been made. After Victoria's death Bertie and his cronies expelled Abdul from England and attempted to destroy all traces of him. They forgot to burn the Queen's diaries written in Urdu, and further evidence was the chest containing letters from the Queen that she wrote when Abdul was visiting India. Nobody's past deserves to be edited out of existence, and I appeal to all my readers to leave behind them some sort of proof of their own existence, however insignificant they might consider themselves.

Success Rate:  + 1.1

	Order from Amazon.com
	Order from Amazon.co.uk
	Order from Amazon.de