Promising

Our friend Eric Hester sent along a review of The Young Victoria which extols the historical accuracy of the film. It sounds quite promising. To quote:

The story is about how the politically-arranged marriage between Victoria and Prince Albert none the less turned into a genuine love match. Normally, filmmakers would have pared all the minor characters away to mere caricatures, yet this movie features the interaction between such esoteric figures as Baroness Lehzen, Sir John Conroy, Baron Stockmar, Lady Flora Hastings and any number of others whom one would otherwise have come across only in the pages of Elizabeth Longford's biography of Queen Victoria or the second volume of Lord David Cecil's life of Lord Melbourne.

With Hollywood movies such as The Reader asking us to believe that a Nazi concentration camp guard would willingly face life in prison sooner than be unmasked as illiterate, and U-571 claiming that the Americans rather than the Royal Navy captured the submarine codebooks that allowed Enigma to be decrypted, it is a liberating experience to watch a movie whose screenplay (by the British writer Julian Fellowes) is based on the most important primary sources of the early Victorian period. Swathes of the script stem directly from the reported speech of the real people themselves.

Where there are inventions in the movie – Albert is shown attending the Coronation, for example, and being grazed by the bullet during one of the many assassination attempts on his wife – these in no way intrude or detract.

The Young Victoria opens in theaters tomorrow. I'll be posting a review soon. Share