Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Director: Fabrizio Ferri, Sharmill Films.
Portrait of the Queen is an event-documentary that looks at the poignant, fascinating and contentious 70-year reign of late Queen Elizabeth II through the eyes of the world’s best photographers.
A carefully distinctive gaze through thousands upon thousands of images that have portrayed her has meant finding, perhaps, a new way to approach a Queen we feel we have always known, but who has always seemed equally out-of-reach.
Each portrait presented in this film, each conversation with the photographers involved in the project, all the accounts of experiences shared by actresses, designers, and British subjects, fit prudently and intricately into the screenplay like pieces of a mosaic that capture some of the multifaceted aspects of the Queen’s image, all different but connected, all equally powerful and significant.
We get some answers to: in reality, who was Queen Elizabeth?
She was the most photographed, the most loved and talked about, spied on, praised, criticised, popular woman on the planet. All over the globe and in every moment of her long life, that came to an end at the age of 96, people have always wanted to watch her through a peephole, discover new things about her, get to know her better, connect with her and understand her.
Directed by award-winning photographer Fabrizio Ferri, Portrait of the Queen is based on the book, Elisabetta II: Ritratto di Regina by Paola Calvett. The documentary features legendary British actor Charles Dance (The Crown, Game of Thrones), with contributions from Emma Blau, Pierpaolo Piccioli, Isabella Rossellini, Susan Sarandon and the Queen’s photographers Brian Aris, Jason Bell, Julian Calder, Chris Levine, David Montgomery, John Swannell.
The film, an original and intimate portrait that goes far beyond the dictates of standard conventional biographies, interweaves the story of the Queen’s life with the equally fascinating lives of the extraordinary photographers who accompanied – and often created and conveyed – the image of British monarchy itself.
- Portrait of the Queen will screen in select Australian cinemas for a limited time on 18 March
