OVP: Victoria & Abdul (2017)

Film: Victoria & Abdul (2017)
Stars: Judi Dench, Ali Fazal, Eddie Issard, Tim Pigott-Smith, Michael Gambon, Olivia Williams
Director: Stephen Frears
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Costume Design, Makeup & Hairstyling)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

If a movie is done well, you should never need a sequel.  Television is great in this regard-it tells a sustained story over a series of dozens of hours, multiple years, potentially many seasons.  But film isn't supposed to function that way, and should really only be told in one story.  We don't have that expectation any more, and I suppose we really haven't since pictures like The Empire Strikes Back and Back to the Future II screwed with the classic concept of a movie, where a sequel is necessary to make the tale complete (I'm not talking about open-ended movies, as they can be splendid-look at something like Martha Marcy Mae Marlene for a superb example), but I think this is a standard we should still hold pictures toward, and why "character sequels" (I saw Nathaniel at The Film Experience use this term, and love the idea of it), are such a treat as they focus on the future of a character, not a plot.  They give us a story that we didn't expect because the original had ended finitely, and as a result feel like a separate movie, a continuation of a character rather than one made necessary by "previously on..."

(Spoiler Alert) This movie, another tale in the life of Queen Victoria, takes place years after the events of Mrs. Brown for which Judi Dench won her first of many Academy Award nominations and became a household name.  Dench is back as Queen Victoria in a slightly lighter fare, one that shows Victoria toward the very end of her reign when she befriends a young Muslim man named Abdul (Fazal) and shocks the court by making him one of her closest confidantes.  Abdul teaches the monarch Urdu and the Koran, and makes a deep impression on the then-Empress of India.

The film tackles territory that can be difficult for a movie in the modern age to encounter sensitively, namely the colonization of India by the British people, and the way that the people of India were subjugated to being second-class citizens under the reign of Queen Victoria.  The movie does do more service to this than I've seen in previous iterations.  While I feel like there are moments that are cringeworthy (Abdul's instant and unabashed devotion to Victoria, which at first feels unearned since he barely knows the woman being chief amongst them), they find time to sharply criticize the British treatment of the Indian people, namely through a supporting character called Mohammad who is neglected by his hosts to the point where he eventually dies from England's sharp cold.  We also see the clear racism in the way that Abdul is treated by the staff, and how his religious tradition's are perpetually brought into question.  Still, though, if you take this with a grain of salt (or a couple of grains, depending on your outrage meter), I felt like it did a good enough job to absolve itself from sharp criticisms in terms of romanticizing colonialism, while clearly not earning any awards for it.

The central reason to attend the film is for Dench's performance.  While Fazal is okay in an underwritten part (all the script seems to call for from his smiling and intense handsomeness, which he brings to the role) and Eddie Izzard is bordering on the Snidely Whiplash as a plotting Prince of Wales, Dench is marvelous as an aging monarch.  One could argue this is a role she could play in her sleep, and the comic bits really are, but there are marvelous moments too with Dench selling, say, the loneliness monologue with a shivering vigor and the way that she seems to balance a maternal love with a burgeoning romantic one for the decades-younger teacher she has befriended.  Dench is such a skilled thespian in the best sense of the word, and brings a humanity to a woman that is most-known in portraits and afternoon-tea-style history books.  No, it's not the best performance of Dench's career, but that feels like an impossibly high bar to set.  It's certainly, though, her best work since Philomena, and possibly even longer.

All-in-all, I enjoyed it mostly for Dench's work but thought it was a pleasant enough film, even if it could have used a more filling out on the sides.  If you've seen the picture, share your thoughts below.  Do you like the idea of a character sequel?  Do you wish there were more of them?  And where does this rank alongside Dench's other great onscreen performances (and will she score an eight Oscar nomination for it?)?