VICTORIA & ABDUL -- a film review
VICTORIA & ABDUL -- a film review Based on Shrabani Basu’s book with the same title ‘Victoria & Abdul’, the movie directed by Stephen Frears deals with the delicate friendship between the Empress of India and a common manservant from Agra. In connection with BBC Films, Director Stephen Frears -- who has given us movies like The Grifters, Philomena, My Beautiful Laundrette and others -- deals here with the complexities of an undesirable alliance (from the British Raj point of view) between Queen Victoria (Judy Dench) who, by her own admission, is a cantankerous, fat, lame and ‘an impotent old woman’, and Abdul Karim (Ali Fazal) from India who is transported to the Buckingham Palace to present the commemorative gold coin ‘Mohur’ celebrating the Golden Jubilee of HRH. Victoria is lonely and under the hawk-eyes of her royal doctor, Dr. Reed, and Sir Henry Ponsonby (the late Tim Pigott- Smith) who hover around her at all times with some other ladies in...