HELEN MIRREN

QUEEN OF ALL SORTS FLIPS ABOUT IN TIME

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

The role requires more than a character actor that can perform authoritarian figures with dignity, but also a strong female character lead that can thwart the relentless attacks of the opposition.

True stories are as fertile territory for the real as for the imagined, while the film set can be as limited as a haunted house or as limitless as a vast kingdom.

And the film production adds to the character with the intricate details of a costume, while the wag of a dog’s tail and the distinct smoke of cannon fire has as much to say as the dialogue in bending and swaying the crowds.

Helen Mirren has that screen presence that enables her to be the managing editor of a Washington newspaper, a directing mind behind an intelligence operation, or the Empress of Russia, and perhaps the Queen of England of this era or perhaps that Queen of England of another era.

In Hitchcock (2012), Mirren plays the Second to the director of suspense. Anthony Hopkins wears a heavy prosthetic as director Alfred Hitchcock, while Mirren plays dear Mrs. Hitchcock as a doting loving wife. But the narrative soon twists and turns through many tedious arguments about financing and eating until the movie becomes a movie about a movie.

The psychodrama only touches the surface, though, since Mirren has the ability to move from film to film by wrapping her character in delicate layers that oscillate between human dignity and authoritarian hubris.

In The Last Station (2009) Sofya, the wife of Leo Tolstoy, is irate about the prospect of losing her legacy to a public trust as her famous husband begins to contemplate the value of his literary works during the last years of his life.

Christopher Plummer performs Tolstoy as a tolerant and loving husband who can overlook only so much animosity and infighting with his wife while being petitioned to make the endowment. Paul Giamatti plays the public interest represented by Chertkov, with James McAvoy as the go-between assistant Valentin, in supporting roles

The performance is influenced by the bubbling chaos of a heiress desperate to hold onto her legacy after birthing and raising 13 children during her marriage with the Russian author.

But everything is so much more reserved while simultaneously ordering people about and processing criticism before making decisions in the Queen (2006). Mirren received the Oscar for her leading performance as Queen Elizabeth II.

The narrative follows the Royal Family and the Prime Minister’s Office during the nation’s grief over the death of Princess Diana. Mirren shows how the Queen’s thoughts on the subject transition from denial to embracing the grief of a nation.

Michael Sheen plays British Prime Minister Tony Blair as sincerely grieving for the loss of the Princess but also continually calculating best political outcomes for himself as well as for Buckingham Palace. Alex Jennings plays Prince Charles. Jennings later plays the Duke of Windsor, the King Edward VIII that abdicated so as to be able to marry American divorcee, Wallis Simpson, in the Crown (2016-2022 TV Series).

Mirren was cast as the Queen after playing Elizabeth I (1533-1604) in the television series, Elizabeth I (2005 TV Series). Elizabeth I is portrayed as a much more boisterous and enigmatic monarch who commanded the attention and respect of her many male advisors.

Elizabeth is shown as having the personal strength required to maintain power while establishing the Protestant Church of England separate and apart from the dominant Catholic religion in Spain and France.

In Winchester (2018) the heiress of the American firearm manufacturer takes on the ghosts of her inherited fortune in a California mansion. Mirren wears the clothes of the time, but her real character comes from the many rooms of the mansion Sarah is having built and from the ghosts that visit them while she dissolves into the haunting shadows cast by the architecture.

Jason Clarke costars as Dr. Eric Price. The psychiatrist has been hired by the Winchester company board of governors to certify Sarah Winchester and relieve her of all the corporate duties.

Price obtains room and board from the heiress in the mansion to complete the medical assessment, but he soon finds out firsthand that what troubles her are the many ghosts of the people killed with Winchester rifles.

The heiress is portrayed as strong willed and commanding, but continually transitioning into and from a state compromised by the ghosts haunting the estate.

Clarke rejoins Mirren as a costar in Catherine the Great (2019 TV Series) about the charismatic Empress that expanded the Russian Empire.

Clarke plays Grigory Potemkin, the Military General in command of the Reformation. Potemkin and Catherine the Great have an ongoing love affair with many deeds of expansion being done in her honour. But the Queen still takes on many lovers to Potemkin’s dismay.

Mirren creates another character ever so subtly different from the character of Elizabeth I as that great woman of another era and another culture ruling Russia from 1762 to 1796. An added layer of masculinity creates a delicate balance that allows Empress Catherine II to rule in her public life but also maintain a somewhat more compromising dominance in her private affairs.

In Woman in Gold (2015) Mirren portrays the Jewish Refugee Maria Altmann, costarring Ryan Reynolds as lawyer Randy Schoenberg. Altmann maintains her dignity while petitioning the Austrian court of public opinion for the return of very famous paintings taken from her family by German Nazi looters prior to World War II.

Altmann faces the indignity of returning to Austria from her home in Los Angeles to petition the gallery to return her paintings. Mirren puts a mask of courage over the typically strong female character lead she has created for the screen.

The successful film career is not all about historical accuracy, though. Mirren can drop the biodrama act to portray contemporary female characters in positions of authority. In The Clearing (2004) Robert Redford and William Dafoe play kidnappee and kidnapper while Mirren plays the strong female maintaining the family presence.

In State of Play (2009) Russell Crowe and Rachel McAdams play Washington newspaper journalists traversing an information paradigm with a congressman, played by Ben Affleck. Mirren is cast as the managing editor nurturing the press egos while bringing the story together beneath the headlines.

Any way the casting is called, Mirren plays strong female characters more often than not in positions of authority and privilege.

But in a rather serendipitous fashion, considering the costume, the set, the tone and atmosphere of the era, the character actor changes the screen persona with various bits of masculine and feminine layered on and about with dignity and grace.