I finally got around to watching The Queen, which hit it big this past year at the Oscars. The Queen follows the reaction (or lack thereof) of Queen Elizabeth in the wake of Princess Diana’s death in Paris. I was still in High School when Diana was killed in that car accident. I didn’t really know much about her at the time and have only recently come to realize the roll she played in global activism for things dear to my own heart. All that aside, that’s not why I wanted to watch The Queen. Rather, it was all the hype surrounding Hellen Mirren’s portrayal of Elizabeth. I was actually surprised at the way in which her performance excelled. Unlike Forrest Whitaker’s performance in Last King of Scotland, which was so powerful that you never stopped thinking “wow, this is really incredible acting,” Mirren’s performance is so subtle that you get drawn into the story and only afterwards realize what a performance it was. In the end I think that’s probably the best kind of acting, the kind that makes you forget someone is actually acting (even if it doesn’t come off as overwhelmingly powerful).