BEFORE: It's still a bit of a jump, but I'm staying with the topic of kings from the U.K. - from the king(s) of Scotland to King George VI and the future Queen Elizabeth. Makes perfect sense that this would have landed on 4/20 because in addition to that other thing that gets celebrated today, it's Hitler's birthday - Adolf would have been 135 today if he'd lived, but come on, there was no way he was going to live that long. With his diet? Forget about it. But that makes me think about World War II, and here comes a film about the end of all that. Yeah, yeah, I know that Hitler died on April 30, and V-E Day was really May 8, but I'm doing the best that I can here.
Jack Reynor carries over from "Macbeth".
THE PLOT: On V.E. Day in 1945, as peace extends across Europe, Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret are allowed out to join the celebrations. It is a night full of excitement, danger and the first flutters of romance.
AFTER: All kidding aside, Queen Elizabeth lived until she was 96, and it's only been about a year and a half since she died - the longest reigning British monarch, the longest reigning female monarch, with 70 years on the throne. (Her grandfather was King George V and HIS grandmother was Queen Victoria.). The majority of people can't remember a time when she wasn't queen, because they simply weren't alive then. So we probably all tend to forget that she was a teenager once upon a time, and she went by the nickname "Lilibet", and she had one sister, Princess Margaret, who went by the nickname "Horseface". (Wait a minute, no, that's right.)
The two teens desperately desired to go out and celebrate when peace broke out in Europe in 1945, but thanks to a combination of home-schooling and in-breeding, they both were ill-prepared to be out in public. Elizabeth kept asking everyone for directions, because she never learned to read a map, also she'd been delivered everywhere by servants her whole life. Not a good look. And Margaret somehow knew all the best places to dance and party, despite never having danced or partied. What could POSSIBLY go wrong? The two girls were do dumb that they ended on separate buses with no open windows, and neither one could comprehend the fact that they couldn't hear each other or communicate in any way. It's almost painful how they're depicted as ignorant in the ways of common man. Like, when they got separated, why didn't they just text each other, or call each other's cell phones? Oh, right, it was 1945.
Princess Margaret ended up drinking too much, as teen girls out partying for the first time might do, and then jumped into a fountain on her way to the nightclubs to dance the Lindy Hop, and then - funny story - ended up with a bunch of prostitutes that were on their way to the Chelsea Barracks to show soldiers a "good time". Ha ha, it's so hilarious to imagine a British princess servicing random soldiers and being totally out of control. (Rule 34 says there simply must be porn about this somewhere, perhaps in a Tijuana bible...). I hate to say it, but the King and the Queen Mum were right to set them up with a room at the Ritz, at a social gathering filled with older aristocrats. I mean, it looked boring but there was probably a good buffet.
Elizabeth, on the other hand, was the more responsible one, even if she didn't understand how maps or buses work, at least she tried to find her wayward sister, with the help of an RAF pilot who had recently gone AWOL. Sure, I know this night probably never happened, but it's a good enough "fish out of water" story with the future queen going incognito and interacting with the common folk. There's a bit of a disconnect here, though, because the film also mentions that Princess Elizabeth served in the military, sort of, as an honorary second subaltern in the Women's Auxiliary Territorial Services - she trained as a driver and mechanic, even if the role was mostly honorary, you'd think that a driver would at least know her way around town.
Supposedly there were two army officers assigned to be their escorts, and according to the film, those escorts were bumbling idiots who got distracted by a conga, went off to have random sex at a party and then were probably court-martialed for losing track of the princesses. These officers never existed, and the night just didn't go down like this, but sure, it's fun to imagine. The real story is that the princesses went out with a group of friends that were also military officers, they walked through Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, Pall Mall, watched their own parents on the palace balcony, and partied until about 3 am, with no known repercussions and without the King having to make a call to cover for an RAF deserter.
I don't watch "The Crown", but I've heard good things - my wife has watched the whole series, while I clearly don't have time for it. I know that Season 1 begins with Elizabeth marrying Prince Philip, so this film could serve as something of a prequel to that series, but then again, so could "The King's Speech". It's a very fertile era for movies, that post World War 2 U.K. setting.
Also starring Sarah Gadon (last heard in "The Nut Job"), Bel Powley (last seen in "Carrie Pilby"), Emily Watson (last seen in "The Book Thief"), Rupert Everett (last seen in "An Ideal Husband"), Mark Hadfield (last seen in "Belfast"), Jack Laskey (last seen in "The Aftermath"), Jack Gordon (last seen in "Phantom Thread"), Tim Potter (last seen in "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day"), Annabel Leventon (last seen in "Wimbledon"), Geoffrey Streatfeild (last seen in "The Lady in the Van"), Roger Allam (ditto), Debra Penny, Ricky Champ (last seen in "Lost in London"), Jack Brady (last seen in "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children"), Jessica Jay, Samantha Baines, Emma Connell, Rab Affleck (last seen in "Made of Honor"), Matt Sutton, Anna Swan, Sophia De Martino (last seen in "The Electrical Life of Louis Wain"), Hayley Squires (ditto), Fiona Skinner (last seen in "Official Secrets"), Laurence Spellman (last seen in "Venom: Let There Be Carnage"), Ben Hall, Ruth Sheen (last seen in "Cyrano"), Edward Killingback, Gintare Belnoraviciute (last seen in "Tomb Raider"), Derek Lawson, with archive footage of Winston Churchill (last seen in "The Special Relationship")
RATING: 6 out of 10 liberated bottles of champagne
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