This movie was recommended to me from several reliable sources, so I finally got around to renting it from redbox and watched it over the weekend. The next day I bought the soundtrack and watched the movie again... twice. I felt like it was a cinematically refreshing experience. A new fave. I'll outline a few things I loved about it, knowing that my recommendations and opinions are based on my taste alone and there is no guarantee that you'll feel as strongly about it as I did. For some reason I do this to movies sometimes... I find one that I really like and I can't just watch it, I sort of have to... ingest it. I'm sure in a few days I'll come down off this cloud and realize that it's just a movie, but I might as well enjoy the cloud while I'm on it. Here are the few items:Acting: Granted, I do like to see actors that I've seen in other things and make connections, but there's something to be said for a movie with more obscure actors, which this film was for me. Probably the most mainstream actor in it is Paul Bettany, whom you might recognize from A Beautiful Mind, A Knight's Tale, and The Da Vinci Code as the tall, skinny, blonde, slightly freaky guy. But the main characters in Young Victoria, Victoria and Albert, were played by two actors that I had only seen in small roles in other movies, (Rupert Friend, who plays Mr. Wickham in the 2005 production of Pride and Prejudice and Emily Blunt, whom we recognized as Ruthie Pigface Draper in Dan in Real Life) so this acting job was clearly a powerful step up in my view.
Character Study: I love thinking about the characters in this story. Victoria is young and yet strong-willed, with so much potential she hasn't really found yet, and she has a lot of pressure put on her from all sides. Prince Albert is portrayed as a slightly awkward young man, yet he is genuine and purely good. I love how he understands and supports her and yet he doesn't back down to her when it counts. It's also interesting to me to see the dynamics between Victoria and her mother.
Music: Holy cow. I was blown away. I haven't heard of any other scores by this Ilan Eshkeri, but I intend to scout out more. I love how the period music is woven into the movie score. Part of me thinks, "How hard can it be to write music for a movie? You just come up with a theme and play it over and over in various forms with different orchestration." But then the other part of me thinks, "Dude. How do you get a simple love theme that basically consists of 3 notes to sound so beautiful and have such a great effect?"
Romance: I just thought this film was sweet and refreshing in this area. For a romance to catch my attention I have to care about the characters, which is what I feel like is missing in so many contemporary romantic movies. If the characters are shallow and undeserving, then who cares if they get together? But Victoria and Albert both seemed like genuinely good people who learned how to support each other the right way, which is what I'm striving for in my own marriage so it was very touching to me.
