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The Young Victoria. With bonus (zombie?) Walt Whitman.
The Young Victoria. Dir. Jean-Marc Vallée, 2009.
I didn't really have expectations for this movie, but I knew I had to see it, and it turned out to be appropriate for Valentine's Day: Albert and Victoria's Epic Love Story.
The C19th and the Victorian Age have never really been my thing, but very recently I've become very interested in Victoria herself, since I am planning an alternate history in which she never existed. For all these reasons I found the politics surrounding Victoria's accession and early reign more interesting than Victoria and Albert themselves, though the movie made them seem fairly intelligent, and fairly realistic about the realities of royalty at the time, at least by the end, and I was quite interested in the portrayal of their uncle King Leopold of Belgium, since he was at one point in line to be Prince Consort of England. I was disappointed, though, that the politics dropped out of the movie's storyline as it progressed. Unsurprisingly, the movie takes a fairly benign view of monarchy as an institution, though it also provides an intriguing snapshot of that era when Parliament had wrested power firmly from the throne but the Lords still retained the premiership. The movie also doesn't focus much on Victoria and Albert's social policy views aside from vague talk about improving conditions for the poor, which is again unsurprising but also disappointing, due to everything I've heard about Albert's purported social conservativism and his influence thereby on the age's mores. But the costumes were pretty! (Thanks to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
damned_colonial I could tell that Albert liked linen shirts.) And the acting was good across the board--Paul Bettany rocks his mutton chops and his role as Lord Melbourne, and Emily Blunt was great as HM the Queen. About twenty minutes in I realized that Marc Strong, whom we just saw as Lord Blackwood in Sherlock Holmes, was playing Sir John Conroy, and it was like the world was reflecting my obsessions back at me. (No, really: I was writing more Holmes fanfic in my notebook until the lights went down.) Art and life, stay separate!
...They don't, though. Every time I ride the train to Philly, I pass the graveyard in which Walt Whitman is buried, and I am struck again by a recurring idea that I have: Walt Whitman rises from the dead and saves Camden! Obviously there are a lot of things wrong with this idea, starting with the obvious, but it will not go away. In my defense, "I dreamed I saw a city invincible" is an immortal (if bowdlerized) line, and it's graven on Camden's City Hall. Perhaps, someday...
I didn't really have expectations for this movie, but I knew I had to see it, and it turned out to be appropriate for Valentine's Day: Albert and Victoria's Epic Love Story.
The C19th and the Victorian Age have never really been my thing, but very recently I've become very interested in Victoria herself, since I am planning an alternate history in which she never existed. For all these reasons I found the politics surrounding Victoria's accession and early reign more interesting than Victoria and Albert themselves, though the movie made them seem fairly intelligent, and fairly realistic about the realities of royalty at the time, at least by the end, and I was quite interested in the portrayal of their uncle King Leopold of Belgium, since he was at one point in line to be Prince Consort of England. I was disappointed, though, that the politics dropped out of the movie's storyline as it progressed. Unsurprisingly, the movie takes a fairly benign view of monarchy as an institution, though it also provides an intriguing snapshot of that era when Parliament had wrested power firmly from the throne but the Lords still retained the premiership. The movie also doesn't focus much on Victoria and Albert's social policy views aside from vague talk about improving conditions for the poor, which is again unsurprising but also disappointing, due to everything I've heard about Albert's purported social conservativism and his influence thereby on the age's mores. But the costumes were pretty! (Thanks to
damned_colonial I could tell that Albert liked linen shirts.) And the acting was good across the board--Paul Bettany rocks his mutton chops and his role as Lord Melbourne, and Emily Blunt was great as HM the Queen. About twenty minutes in I realized that Marc Strong, whom we just saw as Lord Blackwood in Sherlock Holmes, was playing Sir John Conroy, and it was like the world was reflecting my obsessions back at me. (No, really: I was writing more Holmes fanfic in my notebook until the lights went down.) Art and life, stay separate!...They don't, though. Every time I ride the train to Philly, I pass the graveyard in which Walt Whitman is buried, and I am struck again by a recurring idea that I have: Walt Whitman rises from the dead and saves Camden! Obviously there are a lot of things wrong with this idea, starting with the obvious, but it will not go away. In my defense, "I dreamed I saw a city invincible" is an immortal (if bowdlerized) line, and it's graven on Camden's City Hall. Perhaps, someday...
no subject
I would not encourage any such thing, but the world needs more epics set in New Jersey. (Have you ever read the wacky ghost story/thriller/sci-fi novel that is Specimen Days by Michael Cunningham, in which Walt Whitman appears as a character?
no subject
I may or may not be (by which I mean, I totally am) working on a novel that is partly set in New Jersey. The only problem is that it's an alternate C17th/18th New Jersey, and no matter how hard I try I just can't shoehorn Walt Whitman into that picture. I could theoretically work him into a C19th steampunk AU about which I have grand designs, but I wonder whether he might not work better in something more fantastical.
I thought Emily Blunt did an excellent job as Victoria, actually, though they didn't really do much to make her look like a teenager at hte beginning, so the sense of her transformation and growth, physically, is somewhat blunted.
Aren't the politics surrounding her birth so interesting? The movie gestures towards that but doesn't really explore it, which makes me quite sad because I have developed a minor obsession with Princess Charlotte.
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And I very much agree that Charlotte was fascinating. Especially the whole "hoyden" and tomboy stuff.
no subject
She would have been such an interesting Queen.