Helen Mirren Is a Stone Fox

The highlight of my holiday season, hands down, was a handmade Christmas card from my brother Tom. He'll never believe this, but I'd even go so far as to say I like the card better than the peppermint bark it came with (and I really, really, really like peppermint bark.)

The tiny Santa in the upper left hand corner is pretty great, but I'm a particular fan of Baby New Year, who is seen crawling in profile in the lower left hand corner. Clad in the traditional diaper, Baby New Year gazes towards the new day with one blue eye, the picture of dignity in spite (or because of?) the two antennae-like tufts of brown hair sprouting from his infant scalp. I plan to place a standing demand for follow up cards in honor of Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day and the Vernal Equinox.

The holiday season draws to close with the ritual dragging of the dessicated Christmas tree to the local park for recycling, and the ritual vacuuming up of 3 gallons of loose needles from our living room to the building's threshold.

I put my brief hiatus to good use, seeing a slew of movies--"Dreamgirls," "Good Shepherd," and just tonight, "The Queen." Someone started the rumor that "Good Shepherd" is a Wasp "Godfather," and I cannot object to that characterization. Michael has seen it twice now, and thinks it is really a story about sons and fathers, which also rings true. I liked it a great deal, although I knew I would as soon as I heard stories of audience members leaving in confusion.

Nothing gives me more pleasure than cracking a tough narrative nut. (I felt the same way about "Syriana," and if you'll forgive the liberty, "The Lake House." Seriously, a dozen moviegoers stood in the lobby after the screening of the Sandra/Keanu film, debating the story's conclusion and whether "it was all a dream." Dude, it's a magic mail box. Deal with it and move on.) The exception the "tough narrative nut" rule is the tough nut with little or no meat to speak of--as in the later films of Fellini. I am sorry to say it, but I have never been able to get through "Satyricon." When Gore Vidal revealed recently that Fellini redubbed everything to suit not a existing script but his own varied whims, I finally understood my longstanding dislike of his later work. Nothing pains me like shoddy storytelling. Nothing.

"The Queen," if I may steal Michael's line, is really a story about mothers and children. True, Helen Mirren looks more like the Annie Leibowitz-photographed version of my maternal grandmother every day, especially in this role. I never realized before the extent to which my grandmother and Queen Elizabeth shared a taste for the curl and set, the large purse worn over the bent elbow, the below-the-knee skirt and the sturdy shoe. Also, the two women share exact same hair-fine creases over their brows and very slight sag on either side of her chin.

(Virtually no one else would probably see the resemblance. I often make such leaps of recognition, but they are typically mine alone. I also think Harrison Ford looks more like my dad everyday, Gary Sinise bears a striking resemblance to a guy I dated for a month in college and I'd need at least 5 minutes to pick my brother M out of a line up with Ron Livingston and Kyle Chandler.)

But that's not what made me think of mothers and children during "The Queen." Rather, a mother of my acquaintance has observed that children, as they mature, get angry at their mothers, but not their fathers, because it is their mother's shortcomings they resent, whereas children do not have such hopes for their dads. I don't know if I totally believe that--not being a man, I can't speak to the father/son dynamic--but I admit, the mother/child thing fascinates me, not least because I think it won't be long before I know the other side for myself. (And by not long I mean, "sometime in the next 10 years." Although who knows? The same Helen-Mirren-resembling grandmother reproduced into her late 30s, and possibly into her early 40s, depending on which of her various birthdays you accept as fact.)

In any event, "The Queen" does a fantastic job of exploring the dynamics of change and disappointment and hope in the parent/child relationship. It rings strangely true that Cherie Blair (a "daughter") is much harsher in her judgements than the filial Prime Minister Blair, who comes to the Queen's defense again and again.

I subscribe to a zeitgeist theory with the Oscars, with the reigning principle being that whatever film most flatters the Academy most is a mortal lock for Best Picture. "American Beauty" is the best example of this theory in practice, as I believe the Academy members (or the males, anyway) would love to think of themselves as Kevin Spacey, tiptoeing right up to the edge of impropriety and then stepping back, only to be struck down in pursuit of a better way. Last year's "Crash" follows this same theory pretty closely. This year already smells like a time for making statements of principle and standing up for what one believes in (in so far as watching a movie can be said to be a statement of principle.) In the absence of a rampant craze for "Flags of Our Fathers," I think one of the various flawed-fathers-and-their-damaged-sons stories might go all the way--"The Departed," perhaps, or "Good Shepherd."

But if the Academy were 60% or more female, I'd say "The Queen" was done deal. As it is, Mirren would have to be caught blowing a transvestite on Sunset to put even a dent in her spectacular chances at Best Actress.