I've just come out grinning, after seeing Stephen Frears' film Victoria and Abdul, at the century-old Roseville Cinema in Sydney
I've just come out grinning, after seeing Stephen Frears' film Victoria and Abdul, at the century-old Roseville Cinema in Sydney. It is a gorgeous-looking period film that celebrates the feisty affair between Queen Victoria of England (1819-1901, played by Dame Judi Dench, who is 82) and her handsome servant Abdul Karim (Ali Fazal; 3 Idiots, Furious 7), a clerk working in an Agra prison. The Queen is 68 and Abdul Karim is 24, when he has been shipped from Agra to present a mohur (gold coin) to her majesty at her golden jubilee in 1887. She's bored stiff with matters of state. He stares at her, all twinkly-eyed: she stares back at the tall, dark, handsome fellow, who suddenly drops to kiss her feet, unbidden. Thus begins a flirtatious romance that brings the zest back into the queen's life, and lasts 14 years till her death at 82.
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After the Queen was widowed in 1861, she had an affair with her gillie (ghodawalla) John Brown, and after he passed away, she embarked on an affair with another servant, Abdul Karim. Dressed in elegant turbans, sherwanis and mojris, Karim is doe-eyed and genteel, and spouts Rumi and Eastern philosophy ("Life is like a carpet; we weave in and out to make a pattern.") She is so charmed, she wants to learn "Indian" (Urdu, pronounced Er-doo) "and the Quran" from him, and promotes him from servant to munshi or teacher, so she can hang out with him khullam khulla. It's a flirtatious and tender, but never lascivious, mother-son, guru-shishya, queen-servant relationship. Doubtless he's an opportunist, concealing the fact that he is married. The Queen, on discovering his duplicity, simply orders his family shipped over too.
In Stephen Frears' My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), Daniel Day-Lewis plays a working class guy in Thatcher's Britain, who helps, then becomes the lover, of Omar, a handsome British-Pakistani owner of a laundrette business. Through hard work — and underhand means — Omar becomes successful. One reading of the film could be that Asian immigrants were more enterprising, hard working, possibly more worthy, and better survived Thatcherite Britain, which ran counter to popular opinion then. Hanif Kureishi's Oscar-nominated screenplay had a sharper and more nuanced eye on race relations at a time of socio-economic upheaval. Victoria and Abdul has similar, but less nuanced resonances, when valourising a British-Asian immigrant relationship, and with a Muslim at that, fascinating in the time of Brexit. It left the British heirs and sycophants apoplectic.
But, overriding all else, is both Queen Victoria's and Abdul's apparent or willful ignorance and insensitivity about British history in India: the brute violence, economic oppression and outright loot, is all airbrushed. It surfaces only as comic asides, the "native" viewpoint of Karim's buddy Mohammed. For all of Abdul's intelligence and philosophy, he never once questions colonial rule in India: the film seems to toast colonial rule in India, a politically clunky viewpoint in 2017. Dench is feisty; Ali remains obsequiously opaque: even when they discuss the Peacock Throne and the Kohinoor, they remain in Victoria & Abdul's La La Land. Their letters were destroyed, and the film, written by Lee Hall, based on Indian writer Shrabani Basu's eponymous book, cheekily says it is "based on true events… mostly." While the film celebrates a relationship that is colonial and opportunist, it is also anti-ageist. Beyond politics, it is very thrilling to know that someone who was granny material, had bindaas affairs till the age of 82. There's hope for all us women.
Meenakshi Shedde is South Asia Consultant to the Berlin Film Festival, award-winning critic, curator to festivals worldwide and journalist. Reach her at meenakshishedde@gmail.com.
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