May 31, 2017
The "Victoria & Abdul" trailer
features two actors representing a culturally, socially and
economically imbalanced relationship. And when those two actors are the
formidable Judi Dench and the relatively raw Ali Fazal, the chasm
between the have and have-not, becomes more non-negotiable.
But Ali, God bless his unfettered, unselfconscious spirit, manages to
make the relationship between Queen Victoria and her favourite Man
Friday Abdul in this colonial cross-cultural non-romance look
absolutely convincing.
It is in the way Ali looks at Ms Dench -- his eyes soaked in a vinegary
warmth that has nothing to do with lust for power or, God forbid, sex.
It's the look of a guileless, but mature man who adores someone far
above him in rank, wisdom and age.
It's that look which holds us in the trailer of "Victoria &
Abdul". Director Stephen Frears opens up the windows and the doors of
the two hearts that somehow came together in the unlikeliest of
friendship.
The presentation is posh but not overblown. The humour is British but
not over dry. The warmth of the central relationship is tangible, but
not cloying.
While the two central characters grip our senses in the trailer, the
incidental characters also seem to have been carved out of the wood of
the plausible.
The Queen's court throbs with a lived-in familiarity. Judi Dench
snoring off at the dinner table, her deputies declaring her insane for
befriending an Indian ‘peasant', the Queen stubbornly insisting that
her new young handsome Indian Man Friday-turned-friend teach her Urdu
and the tenets of the Holy Quran -- it all adds up to a feeling of
being in the midst of a relationship that transcends convention and
definition.
Every time Ali looks at Ms Dench with that heart-melting smile, I am
reminded of Gulzar Saab's lines "Humne dekhi hai un aankhon ki mehekti
khusbhoo, haath se chhu ke isse rishton ka ilzaam na do".
Ali Fazal, get ready to be the next Shashi Kapoor in the West.
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