Review of Victoria & Abdul (2017) by Ann S — 06 Nov 2017

In 2010, over 100 years after his death, the private journals of Abdul Karim, munshi to Queen Victoria, were discovered, allowing us to finally experience the extraordinary story of a subject who managed to rise up and gain the personal trust of his distant, mythical ruler.

Victoria and Abdul is a charming movie, thanks in part to its wry British sense of humor. There's a real joy in watching the royal household get flustered by Abdul's increasing favor with the queen. All the while, they display a total lack of understanding of Indian culture. If this movie is good for nothing else, then it's see Judi Dench (James Bond) as Queen Victoria again, who plays the monarch with irreverent humanity. She's introduced as lethargic and disinterested in her royal duties. The effect is to completely demystify the larger than life figure. That feels like the big point of this movie: to demystify. Abdul's presence demystifies Indians to a ruler who's never visited India. The British characters' bumbling incompetence demystifies the British Empire to Abdul. Suddenly, the nation that's supposedly superior enough to rule the world doesn't look so special. The obvious can't be helped but asked: how can a foreign power govern a nation if it is so ignorant and hostile to that nation's culture?

Even though Victoria and Abdul promises to introduce a new perspective on colonialism, both in-film and on the meta level, it doesn't deliver that. Despite being the only Indian with the queen's ear, Abdul Karim only brings up the British oppression once. The Queen is receptive to his grievance, but nothing comes out of even that exchange. It may be a British movie, but that's no excuse for the filmmakers not to be more self-reflective on Britain's imperial past. While Victoria and Abdul may not be a particularly profound one, it sure is a superficially good one, with jokes that are worth laughing at and a faded picture quality to give the movie a vintage appearance, and although Abdul isn't as fleshed out as he could be, he's a compelling enough character to be worth rooting for.