Film suggests Queen was baffled by grief over Diana
From Mike Collett-White

VENICE—Queen Elizabeth was unable to comprehend British public grief at Princess Diana's death in 1997, but was finally convinced to cast aside stiff royal protocol by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a new film suggests.
Stephen Frears' "The Queen" was screened at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday, where it is flying the British flag in the main competition section.
Helen Mirren, who has just won an Emmy for her title role in the mini-series "Elizabeth I," had the unusual task of portraying a living monarch in a film that also explores the then newly-elected Blair's central role in the crisis.
"It was a very, very frightening project," she told reporters. "It's a no-win situation playing someone who's alive, because, as good as you are, you'll never be a tenth as good as they are, so you can't really win.
"I hope it's a sensitive, humanist look at a very difficult time in a strange family."
With tightly rolled silver hair in the film and her voice trained to match that of the monarch, Mirren gives a convincing performance full of humor and sympathy for a woman struggling to abandon the stiff upper lip she believed her people wanted.
"There's been a change, some shift in values," Mirren's queen says during a conversation with her mother at Balmoral in Scotland. She also contemplates abdicating the throne.
"I don't think I'll ever understand what happened this summer," she adds toward the end of the film in a conversation with Blair. "I've never been hated like that before."
The British public was angry at what it saw as indifference from the royal family to Diana. Hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets of London for her funeral.
The film makers do not claim to exactly duplicate the moment in history, although they say extensive research, including speaking to sources close to the royal family and Downing Street, resulted in a realistic dramatization.
The film has lit up a festival where critical reaction to entries so far has been muted. Producer Andy Harries said he did not know of or foresee any legal complications:
"There is no tradition of the royal family suing anybody or anything. Their position is one of being distanced from it."
Frears suggests Blair saw the long-serving monarch as a mother figure, while Britain's Prince Charles is cast as someone closer to Blair's position than his mother's. He also fears his family's unpopularity could result in him being shot.
The film contains plenty of humor, particularly when dramatizing scenes of intimacy between the queen, her husband Prince Philip, Charles and her mother.
"Move over, cabbage," Philip says as the couple go to bed, and the queen dons a woolly dressing gown and clutches a hot water bottle on the night Diana is killed.
Michael Sheen reprises the part of Blair that he also played in the television drama "The Deal."
The prime minister, himself riding on a wave of popularity at the time as the queen's ratings plummeted, is portrayed as someone genuinely concerned for the royal family.
In contrast, his spokesman at the time, Alastair Campbell, comes across as a cynical operator.
The final scene has the queen warning Blair that his standing in the public's eyes will not be so high forever.