Elizabeth: A Portrait in Part(s): Director’s Final Film Locates the Woman Beneath the Crown

By Karen Gordon

Rating: B+

Your idea of Elizabeth II is likely influenced by your age. Did you encounter her when she was still a young woman reshaping the monarchy for a more modern age? Or is your sense of her more as the senior citizen, continuing to do her work despite scandals involving her children and grandchildren, in an era that asks whether the monarchy is relevant?

Queen Elizabeth quite consciously charted a different course for the monarchy when she took over 70 years ago, adjusting the role for a modern era. “The crown” she says at one point, “is an idea more than a person”

As part of that, she folded herself into the role of Queen of England and the Commonwealth to an astonishing degree, making herself more figurehead than human being. The symbology may be what we see when we look at her. But as she achieves this landmark —70 years as Queen, the longest reign, and the longest-lived Monarch in British history, who is she?

That’s the question late British director Roger Michell and his editor Joanna Crickmay pose in Elizabeth: A Portrait in Part(s), a respectful, affectionate portrait of a woman coinciding with her Platinum Jubilee.

The film, which was a COVID project by Michell, is made up entirely of archival footage of the Queen at various stages in her life, mixed with an assortment of other things: news footage of ordinary people, and clips from movies and popular culture, to add colour and underline themes. It throws out a conventional narrative for something that plays more like a cinematic tone poem.

There’s no narration, and the story is not in chronological order. Instead, it’s set up in themed chapters, with headings like “Love Story,” “Heavy is the Head,” “Mummy,” “Time Passes.” But even within the chapters what we see isn’t organized in a conventional story style. Instead, it’s a pastiche, with images of the Queen from different moments in her life, sometimes moving from childhood to modern day and then footage of her somewhere in between.

It’s an interesting juxtaposition of the Queen as a woman, as a girl, as a monarch, at work, at play, in love. For anyone who grew up with the more matronly era of the Queen, images of her as a vivacious, playful, beautiful young woman are fascinating. At one point, Paul McCartney confesses having once had a crush on her.

Without narration, and with each chapter moving around in time, the film seems like a hodgepodge. But there’s method to the madness. This is an unusually structured but well-crafted film. Indeed, Michell and Crickmay achieve something quite remarkable. Without losing a sense of the formality and tradition surrounding the British monarchy, we get a sense of Elizabeth, the royal and the woman, one who took up the job of being Queen, committed to it, and has, through the decades, continually served the people of the Commonwealth.

The film repeatedly shows the Queen touring the world, sitting through ceremonies, greeting people in crowds, always with her full attention. Always the same; a quiet restraint and dignity. It also touches briefly on the family scandals.

But she is steadfast, continuing the work she set out for herself 70 years ago. It’s quite a wonderful way of looking at this stoic woman who has devoted herself to the job, and who is beloved by millions.

And a note: This is the final film by director Roger Michell, who made movies including Changing Lanes, Enduring Love, Notting Hill, and Peter O’Toole’s final film Venus, and documentaries including Nothing Like a Dame. Michell finished the final sound mix on Elizabeth: A Portrait in Part(s), and died later that day of a heart attack at the age of 65.

Elizabeth: A Portrait in Part(s). Directed by Roger Michell, edited by Joanna Crickmay. In theatres May 25 (matinée) and May 28 (evening).