Young Victoria [DVD] [2009]

When I think of Queen Victoria, the following descriptive adjectives do not immediately or even eventually appear: young, slender, beautiful, charming, delightful, outgoing, spontaneous, cheeky, fun-loving and funny. Yet this is the Victoria we are given in this lavishly beautiful film. Nor is this all. As a princess at 18 she’s clever, dreamy, self-reliant, romantic and passionate. Yes, passionate. Who would have known?Royal marriages were not marriages per se. They were dynastic arrangements and alliances. Victoria’s was to be the same. The Crown was concerned, as ever, with affairs in Europe. Britain’s Empire was growing and would reach its zenith under Victoria as Queen. But nothing in life is to be taken for granted. Stability in Europe, particularly in parts of Germany, was as important to Britain as stability in Britain. Therefore particular suitors in the dynastic houses of Germany were sought.Albert was one of these, a prince in the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, a distinguished line among the Teutonic royals. The interests of Belgium under King Leopold I (Victoria’s uncle) were also at stake in the alliance. Young Albert might help to strengthen political and economic ties between Belgium and Britain if married to the heir to the English Crown, as King Leopold I was the uncle of young Albert.Early on we meet Victoria as a girl of 11. Her father — he who would be king — has died. She has no brothers. Her uncle, William IV, is king. But his health is poor. It’s understood that he might not live long enough for Victoria to reach mature adulthood before being crowned. This understanding is proved apt. On the night of 20 June 1837 the king dies. The crown must now be fitted to the head of an 18-year-old girl whose understanding of the world is largely based on hearsay and secondary sources (as she has been a virtual prisoner in the royal palace all her life). In fact, she is so protected and guarded she is not even allowed to walk down a flight of stairs by herself. No, this cannot be risked. A female attendant must always be there to hold her hand.As for love, what’s that? She knows novels, but no young men. None have been allowed near her. Like any girl, she longs to be normal. She wants to sing, dance, run around outside in the rain. She wants to laugh, gossip and play with her contemporaries, none of whom seem to exist. Consequently she grows up in a stately, traditional, rigid and ancient world where everything is ordered and controlled and nothing is spontaneous and surprising. Of course she hates her life. Given what she must endure, what girl wouldn’t?But she’s sensible. She sacrifices and sublimates personal desire for the high purpose and responsibility she knows she’s been born to. Not a death sentence by any means, but a kind of prison sentence all the same, condemned to life in a doll’s house.Perhaps all this needs to be understood for us to appreciate what she appreciated. Prince Albert was not a prince in name alone. He was a prince in feeling and spirit as well. He loved her, truly loved her. Had she been a cleaning maid and he a stable boy he would have loved her. Her eyes, her smile, her voice — all enchanted him. Her mind and manner too. She was refined, well bred, but not stiff, not formal. The formality was a necessary show, a performance she had to make. But the real young Victoria is the one we see running outside in the rain with Albert. Albert clicks his heels, does a little dance, throws his hat in the air, frolics on the wet lawn. Instead of just watching and laughing, she dashes into the rain too while laughing. There on the lawn they embrace, kiss, and let the heavens pour down on them.Maybe the filmmakers have taken liberties and made this scene up. Yes or no, it doesn’t matter because it’s in keeping with the spirit of their love.In another scene we watch them playing chess in the royal palace under the watchful eyes of all the adult chaperones in the room. The adults are there but obscure in the background. The faces of Albert and Victoria are lit in the soft amber light of candles. Both look radiant, happy, beautiful. We feel this is their world, this little world over the chess board. They move the pieces in the game, as they themselves know they’ll also be moved in the political game of life. But it doesn’t matter. They have each other and their love — this love that will support them through everything.It did. They married. They were happy. They were married for 20 years and had nine children. Victoria believed in God and thought Albert had been sent to her by him. But Albert died young, at age 42 in 1861. She was inconsolable. The love of her life gone, she sublimated passion again for duty and responsibility. She was a great and able ruler, surrounded by good advisors whom she trusted. She brought Britain the stability the Crown and country had wanted. She served longer than any monarch in the history of Britain until the current Queen of England outlasted her mark. But for the rest of her life she wore black, never re-married, had servants lay out Albert’s clothes every morning in memoriam and visited Albert’s grave regularly. We have no record of her weeping there but we don’t need any to know she did.Their love was unplanned, accidental, even a heavenly gift, but it was real. It also built the foundation of the rule of Queen Victoria. He gave her strength, confidence, self-belief, and all her life she thanked her good fortune to have met, known and married him.The film pays tribute to this love. If Emily Blunt the actress seems too impossibly beautiful to have been young Victoria, this too doesn’t matter. Victoria was pretty anyway as a girl, and Emily’s physical beauty is Victoria’s beauty in spirit. Rupert Friend, who plays young Albert, is dashing, handsome, thoughtful, considerate, and just as passionate as Victoria. The bedroom scenes are perfect — intimate and tender. From time to time there are hints of sexuality, which is perfectly appropriate too, as their nine children were not dropped down the chimneys of Buckingham Palace by a stork.The film left me feeling happy. Maybe I’m naïve, but not everything in life has to be cynical, political and devious. Even those born into royalty have hearts. They are persons of flesh and blood, just as we are. They hurt, cry, dream and love. By humanising Victoria so beautifully we are given an intimate and unconventional view of how she looked in her world. I rather envied Albert in a vague and dreamy sort of way. I wouldn’t really want to be married to a queen, but seeing Victoria and how much he loved her I envied the state he was in. He found the love of his life and, almost miraculously, it mirrored exactly what she felt. Her love for him changed everything in her inner life. She was a queen but felt humbled and honoured to be his wife.

What to say about this movie?Well, for a start, that it's enchanting, marvelous and so sweet... but not in a nauseating way: it's sweet in the sense that it will make your heart flutters and make you feel so much better for it.The Young Victoria narrates the first years of Queen Victoria's reign. At the start of the movie Victoria is 17 years old and we find her trying to fight off both her mother, and her mother's controller , sir John Conroy, who want her to pass the regency to them.The king, William IV is ill, and the only legitimate heir to the throne is Victoria. He prays to last a little longer just to see Victoria eighteen's birthday and avoid any threat of regency. He is granted his wish (he dies barely one month after his niece turns 18) and Victoria is coronated Queen in 1837.For Victoria - who lived her childhood in a state of golden captivity - becoming Queen equals to become free.Despite Conroy attemps to break her character through the "Kensington rule" of his own invention, when we meet Victoria she is just a lively, headstrong teenage girl.When she becomes Queen she thinks everyone will stop treating her like a pawn in a game of chess but she's wrong of course: the real game has just begun.She's naive enough to fall under the spell of Lord Melbourne, the whig PM, who acts like a guide and a friend to her but who deep down is concerned only about his own aims. Following his advice Victoria almost destroyes the monarchy.Luckyly for her, there's Albert.Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha is Victoria's german cousin. Their uncle, king Leopold of the Belgians wished for a marriage between them practically since their births. He arranged a meeting between them but didn't count on the fact that they would fall in love for real: their romance became a legend, and probably there was never a royal marriage as happy as theirs. A real union builded on true love, devotion, and respect. And passion. They had nine children in the span of 17 years. A record.In this movie we see the start of their marriage: the blissfull happiness of two young people so much in love, but also the difficulty of finding a common ground in their relationship. You'll feel for the Prince consort when he is treated just like a guest in the Queen's household.Despite this, we can really see how Albert became the true ligh in Victoria's life. He was the only one who was really devoted to her as Victoria and not as the Queen (and he was also devoted to her Country which owns so much to him, but learnt to appreciate him only after his death).After seeing this movie I perfectly understand why a woman like Victoria would mourn a man like Albert for 40 years. Had he lived longer maybe the world would have seen a lot less horrors. He wasn't a saint, but he was a good man, really ahead of his time, a truly visionary, and he has my whole respect.Emily Blunt - who usually steals any movie she stars in - is wonderful here. She is 25 years old, yet, at the beginning of the movie she completely convinced me that she was just a teenager... She really matures as the movie goes on, and at the end she really embodies a Queen. Sometimes you get frustrated with her, but that's just how Victoria is supposed to be: she was a complex character in life, she was way too stubborn, and yet you can't help loving her because deep down she was just striving to do the right thing for her country and her people. And Blunt captures this so beautifully in the 1h and 40 minutes of the movie's running time.I hope the Academy doesn't forget her for the next Oscar season. And the same goes for Rupert Friend.What to say about him? Well, prepare to fall in love with him. Completely,utterly in love. I don't think it's a coincidence that all the scene he is in turn out to be all the best moments of the movie. His Albert is shy, sweet, restrained, and totally smitted with Victoria from their first meeting. He is also goofy: you'll laugh at many scene with him. His is a beauiful, beauiful performance, one that will remind you how wonderful a man can be sometime... Friend and Blunt share a truly special chemistry... Wait for their first dance together: it will make your heart soar along with theirs.These two young and so very talented actors are undoubtedly the highlights of the movie, but the rest of the cast is also impressive. British actors are truly the best in the world.Miranda Richardson, Paul Bettany, Harriet Walter (I loved her Queen Adelaide) are wonderful. I wish Michael Maloney would have had a meaty part as sir Robert Peel, but he was great even with the little he had to do. The same can be said about Jim Broadbent. I loved even Mark Strong's john conroy: his last scene almost made me feel sorry for him.The scenery, the costumes, the editing, the music were outstanding.The movie is pretty historical accurate, with the ecception of a scene towards the end of the movie that was exagerrated for drammatic purpose... I've got conflictual emotions towards this scene: on one hand I can't take it seriously as I know it really didn't happen, on the other hand, the scene that follows is so sweet and sulful that I can't help being swept away with it.All in all, one of the most endearing movies I've seen in a while. Be good to yourself and purchase it. I bet, you'll spend many days after waching it browsing the web to learn everyhing about Victoria, her reign, and her Albert. That's wha happend to me. God save the Queen, indeed.