This past weekend marked the yearly race my Husband and I participate in without fail: Seeing at least one Oscar-nominated movie before the awards show. Little Miss Sunshine was the Sundance breakaway hit of all time. Haven’t seen it. The Departed is Scorcese’s most scorching hit since Goodfellas. Haven’t seen it. Helen Mirren, who I adored in the BBC’s Prime Suspect, gave the performance of her stellar career as Queen Elizabeth. Missed it.
So we got out the movie listings and weighed our options. I voted for The Departed because I love crime noir like L.A. Confidential, The Usual Suspects and Memento. Husband leaned toward The Queen because he loves historical depictions, majestic settings and my attraction to filmed violence makes him squirm. Since we were spending the weekend upstate in the Hudson Valley we decided to see The Queen at a little theater in one of the charming, rustic towns the area is famous for. We caught an early afternoon matinée, a movie time that traditionally skews to a senior citizen audience.
Two ladies sat down behind us and while Husband cruised the snack counter I couldn’t help but overhear their conversation. They both had very mature lady voices with upstate New York accents. Without being obvious and actually turning around to look at them I figured I’d put them somewhere in their seventies. One started telling the other she had purchased an undergarment to wear to this Pilates class she was taking and she wanted to call it a tank top but it wasn’t. The friend suggested it was an undershirt. The first one said no, it had a fancier name but she couldn’t think of it except she thought it started with a ‘c’. The friend offered ‘chemise’ but that didn’t sound right to either of them. They were so adorable I almost turned around and said ‘camisole’ but even I realized that would be rude and besides, did she say Pilates?
Lady #1 then mentioned she was surprised at the number of men in her class. Lady #2 asked if there were any good ones. Lady #1 said there was one who had a lot of energy and she described him. Lady #2 said he sounded like a guy who played in a band she used to go listen to. Husband returned with no snacks and began to explain why but I shook my head ‘no’ in the short staccato bursts a wiretapper would use for the pizza delivery guy. Lady #2 then asked if anyone had heard from Alexandra lately since she hadn’t returned her phone call. Lady #1 asked why didn’t she just go on her website? The lights went down and the previews came on or I’m sure I would have heard one of them offer to burn the other a Goo Goo Dolls CD.
Staying ahead of the curve is de rigeur these days with events and technology causing the cutting edge to become obsolete faster than you can Google it. We Baby Boomers learned early on that our sheer numbers would not keep the universe revolving around us indefinitely. That particular realization occurred to me about twenty years ago when I was paying the teenage babysitter after an evening out. She was gathering the music cassettes she had brought with her and I noticed one of them was Paul McCartney and Wings. Feeling very musically connected to someone half my age I asked her if she was also a Beatle fan. She looked at me for a split second and then brightened. “Oh, The Beatles. Wasn’t that McCartney’s first group?”
Were The Beatles Paul McCartney’s first group?
Was The Bible God’s first book?
I mean He could write a string of best-selling romance novels after that and who would care? He wrote the frickin Ten Commandments. I could see my sun lowering on the horizon.
The Queen was terrific, a really thoughtful telling of how and why the monarchy seemed so clueless and obstinate in dealing with the death of an ex-Princess worshiped by the people more than the monarch herself. And therein, as the Bard would say, lies the rub. Aside from the many ruminations as to who ultimately drove Diana to her death – the Royal Family for first arranging the marriage and then disparaging it, Charles for never developing a backbone to stand up to his family, the media for stalking her, the adoring public for demanding to see and know everything about her thereby creating the stalkerazzi – beside all that the compelling question remains can any government effectively lead a people without truly knowing and caring what’s in their hearts? There is a point where cluelessness becomes disrespect. How surprising that the seemingly repressed and conservative British managed to convey that to their Queen in the five days between Diana’s death and her funeral and we expressive, liberal Americans across the pond haven’t pulled off that trick in four years.