丨 Huang Xiaomi
Netflix's modern British royal drama "The Crown" The fourth season of the story from the end of the seventies to the beginning of the nineties, the more well-known drama finally opened, the first episode is just before the opening paragraph Kaizong Mingyi told us that this season is about two British women who were as famous as the Queen in the last century: Prime Minister Thatcher and Princess Diana. Of course, this drama is neither "Iron Maiden" nor "The Royal Enmity of Princess Diana". The focus of "The Crown" is always the queen's private affairs and the situation of the royal power in modern Britain.
"The Crown" (2020)
"The Crown" makes people want to stop, but the core is a family soap opera, similar to "Downton Abbey", the gorgeous aristocratic background and the detailed description of the British privileged class often make people ignore the plot.
"Downton Abbey" (2020)
However, the purely fictitious "Downton" prefers to use warmth to create a roughly happy ending, and the main characters in "The Crown" have their real names and real names. The Royal Family of Windsor indeed had several pieces in the last century. At the center of the tragedy, scandals and dog-blood news still broke out to this day. Therefore, the ideal ending for each round of conflict in the series is nothing more than a compromise. The audience almost couldn't help but check the historical truth while watching the drama. It can be seen that the real secrets of the Wang family are always the main reason for the attraction.
"The Crown" (2020)
The tragedy of Princess Dai is the most anticipated passage since the launch of "The Crown". How can a story that has penetrated into the collective memory of countless people around the world be dramatized again? At the beginning of the fourth season, Prince Charles first recognized the girl Diana, and reappeared when he decided to find a marriage partner acceptable to the royal family. This series of scenes are very beautifully designed, simple and beautiful, and very playful. The cautious girl took the initiative to get to know the prince, and sensibly provided comfort after he lost a loved one. The prince’s lover Camilla was already a married woman, and he finally turned his attention to the young girl.
Diana is standing on the porch of her mansion waiting for Charles’s car to pick her up. The actor Emma Corrin’s face is full of expectation. This place is filmed with an atmosphere of ancient Greek tragedy. A person who is unaware of the future is heading towards his own destiny. .
However, the unfolding of the tragedy is inevitable and clichéd. Although the drama has minimized the quarrel between the Prince of Wales and his wife, it still makes people feel that conflicts are repeated. In the previous seasons, the Queen herself was derailed by Prince Philip, the Duke of Windsor and his wife were spurned by the family, and Princess Margaret was not allowed to marry a divorced person. We have learned that there is no perfect marriage in the palace, and the royal identity must be maintained. You must compromise.
revisited the old tune of this season. Diana's light overshadowed Charles. Charles is the only person in the world who is not captured by her charm, and the only person who can sting her. Their marriage is an inextricable mistake. It’s just that the resistance of Diana and Charles made others unexpected. The stormy waves of their unfortunate marriage will not arrive until the next season. At the end of this season, the Queen and his wife gave them an ultimatum, which seems to have entered a divorce cooling-off period, but We already know the end of the story.
"The Crown" has clarified the fate of the royal family members from the first season: in order to prevent the royal power from being ruined in the hands of his own generation, he cannot do anything extraordinary. The queen must say "duty" is actually inaction, and be a good mascot within the scope of the Constitution.
herself first chose to obey the arrangements of fate, sacrifice everything she had, and was willing to be a symbol without personality. After that, there were all kinds of "birds", all of which were recovered by the invisible but huge royal power mechanism, even the most individual. Princess Margaret has also become a practitioner of this theory this season. To be honest, after understanding this mechanism, "The Crown" has lost a lot of new ideas, because it is all about this kind of reason, and it is just a group of people. It is a new generation of "deserted soldiers" in reality, and the future of Harry and Meghan is still more confusing.
One of the predecessors of "The Crown" is screenwriter Peter Morgan's successful stage play "The Queen's Summon", which uses the weekly meeting between Elizabeth II and previous prime ministers as a window to show the queen's humanity.
"The Queen Summoned" (2013)
Since "The Crown" focuses on the royal whispers behind the great history, prime ministers are usually only supporting roles. This season's Margaret Thatcher is the second prime minister to be written as the main character after Churchill in the first season. Because the changes she made to the UK during her ten-odd years of reign are too far-reaching, her evaluation of her is particularly polarized. So far, the pros and cons have been blushing. In the play, her casual derogation of women is more surprising than her governance policy. As the first female prime minister of the United Kingdom,
thinks that women are too emotional to be in a high position, but she hates her mother’s lack of ambition and only willing to be a housewife. Thatcher only recognizes strong people. But can't distinguish between self-confidence and complacency, blindly doting on his defiant son.
"The Crown" does not try to clarify these contradictions, but is willing to present the contradictions in her. For example, the iron lady is used to cook and entertain herself at home to discuss the country, although every actor in "The Crown" is interviewed. Said that they did not deliberately be vivid, but they all studied the accent and expression of the prototype without exception. And Mrs. Thatcher, played by Gillian Anderson, is more to the top, disappearing more completely than Meryl Streep in "Iron Lady", sometimes to the edge of exaggeration.
Peter Morgan is good at selecting national events and royal gossip from the complex historical materials, combining the two in the same episode for theatrical reproduction. When this trick is effective, it not only makes the story very dramatic, but also seems to find a reasonable clue to connect royal secrets and historical events. The most effective episode of
this season is called "Favourite". The state matter is the dispute between Britain and Argentina over the Falkland Islands, and the personal matter is that Mrs. Thatcher's son lost his way in the Dakar Rally. Originally, there was no direct relationship with the queen, but the screenwriter made the queen decide to figure out which of the four children is her favorite because she saw that Margaret Thatcher loved her son. So there were four lunches with four children. She was as surprised as she saw four strangers.
Prince Edward was bullied because of his privileged status, but he already took the privilege for granted; Prince Andrew’s bridge was obviously inspired by his involvement in the Epstein scandal last year. The Queen’s actor, Olivia Coleman, is Connoisseur of cold-faced comedy, her performance is probably the funniest performance in the four seasons of "The Crown"; Princess Anne and Prince Charles are both in unsatisfactory marriages, both complaining about Diana for their own reasons, and Prince Charles talking about him. With the poetic wild garden concept, the queen once again offered the most black humorous impatient reaction. At the end of this episode, Margaret Thatcher retrieved her son, and the battle of the Falkland Islands was about to start. The queen realized that her child was the one who was lost. The words and deeds of the royal family members of
make people sigh that the privileged class does not need to be hypocritical. Their greatest privilege is to be able to show their shallowness and prejudice generously without worrying about the perception of others. On the contrary, the queen who is often presented as the royal conscience in the play is a bit unbelievable.
Other dramas produced in "The Crown" also have some plain points. The episode of "Balmoral Castle Test" talks about class differences. Margaret Thatcher was unable to integrate into the leisurely aristocratic lifestyle. She failed the test, but Diana, who was born to a nobleman, passed the test with a high score and was appointed as the prospective wife. Margaret Thatcher, who was born in the middle class, is certainly not a leisurely aristocrat, but the difference in class is not reflected in the aspects that are so easy to cover up that she does not wear Willington rain shoes or mistakes the dinner time.
In this season, there is an episode directly depicting the unemployed in London in the Thatcher era. With reference to the same period of British movies such as Mike Lee's "At the same time", the performance in "The Crown" is undoubtedly superficial, and even finally made the Queen sympathize. The unemployed intruder is too far from the facts. The Queen’s talk with the civilians in a panic is unbelievable. It is a bitter injury that the first-class actors can’t save. This is the screenwriter’s trick to “motivate people”. When it fails, it is not a problem that only this season has. It takes a lot of thought to write the marginalized royal family into the center of history.
At the beginning of this season, "The Crown" has finally arrived in the contemporary era, and it is still interesting to watch. It is more attractive than other series of royal secrets because of the fact that real people are in the seat (although the creator has repeatedly claimed to be a joke).
英The royal family has become a global IP. There are many royal fans, some collect mugs with the queen's head, some travel far away to Buckingham Palace to see the new princess, some are waiting to listen to the queen's speech at Christmas, some love to delve into it The noble posh English, in the gossip weekly, there are royal experts broke the news that the king, prince, and princess are only characters in fairy tales, and some people are always willing to pay for the scandals or happy events of these characters.
