Link to the thread on The Queen (2006).

Last night I finally got around to watching this film, which was the first film to be written by Peter Morgan, directed by Stephen Frears, and star Michael Sheen as Tony Blair. It was produced for British TV, and works on a much smaller scale than its follow-up, The Queen, so it is pretty obscure in North America; it only came out on DVD a few weeks ago, and when it did, the Weinsteins had the gall to call it a "prequel" to The Queen, which it most definitely is not. (Prequels are sequels that take place before the films that were made earlier. The Deal was made first, so it cannot be a sequel, and thus it cannot be a prequel.)

But of course, by now, we cannot help but look at the first film through the lens of the much more famous second film. So look at it that way, I shall.

Sheen as Blair comes across as a much, what's the word, oilier? character in this film than he does in The Queen. We see him as a young MP forced to share a cramped office with Gordon Brown (an almost unrecognizably pudgy David Morrissey) during the Thatcher years, and suddenly Blair's awestruckness when he gets to meet Elizabeth II at the beginning of The Queen takes on a whole new light. For those of us who first heard of Blair when he was already a political celebrity, the fact that The Queen begins with him at the peak of his celebrity might make him seem almost like a quasi-equal with Her Majesty, and thus might make his hesitancy outside Buckingham Palace seem rather pro forma; but seeing the same character, played by the same actor, and in a much smaller film made by people who probably didn't have any guarantees that they would be able to make a follow-up movie about Her Majesty... well, it really underscores the dramatic arc that Blair himself took over the first dozen-plus years of his political career.

Interestingly, just as The Queen is (as the title suggests) more about Elizabeth II than it is about Blair, so too The Deal is kind of more about Gordon Brown than it is about Blair. At any rate, I got the feeling that there were more scenes focusing on Brown-apart-from-Blair than there were focusing on Blair-apart-from-Brown. (E.g., after a brief prologue that takes place at the end of the story, the beginning of the story proper is centred on Brown, who is working alone in his office when fellow newly-minted MP Blair is imposed on him by the party.) Morgan is reportedly working on a third film about Blair, looking at his relationship with the American presidents (early reports indicated it would focus on Bush; more recently Morgan has said it will focus on Clinton), and I wonder if that film, too, will somehow focus a little more on the OTHER guy than it does on Blair. (If it does, then that would be odd, since in that case, the OTHER guy won't be British.)

As a Canadian, of course, I cannot help but be struck by the parallels between our politics in the '90s and British politics in the '90s. Both nations saw the collapse of formerly wildly-popular Tory governments (though the British party's collapse was delayed by the surprise re-election of John Major's government in '92; ours collapsed in '93), and in both nations, the party that reaped the benefits (Labour in England, Liberal in Canada) was led by a pair of rivals, the leader of whom had given charge of the nation's finances to the other guy as a sort of consolation prize (Blair making Brown his Chancellor of the Exchequer in England, Jean Chretien making Paul Martin his Finance Minister in Canada) -- and after a decade of this arrangement, the "other guy" got tired of being #2 and had the prime minister squeezed out of the leadership of the party so that he, the #2 guy, could finally become the #1 guy (Brown becoming the British PM in '07, Martin becoming the Canadian PM in '03). The analogy isn't perfect, of course; e.g., Blair was a relatively new guy on the scene, whose rise to the leadership of the Labour party apparently caught some people off-guard (he was also the youngest British PM since Lord Liverpool in 1812), whereas Chretien was an older guy who had been an MP for all but a few years between '63 and becoming party leader in '90. But the similarities in the broader outline are certainly interesting.

Also interesting: The characters talk a few times about how Margaret Thatcher was run out of her party mainly because she stayed in power too long, and how the ideal length of any prime ministership should be six years -- basically one full term of office. As it happens, this film was made in '03, six years after Blair became PM in '97 -- and two years after he was re-elected in '01. So at the time the film was made, it would presumably have been seen to be making a strong critique of Blair for staying in power. It is similar to how The Queen includes a bit near the end where Her Majesty reminds Blair that the masses which made him a celebrity could easily turn on him, too, just as they turned (and un-turned) on the Royals; and of course, that film came out in '06, at a time when Blair was facing a lot of criticism, and less than a year before he was finally compelled to resign from the party's leadership and hand it over to Brown.

One last comment, for now: I was going to ask, "Has anyone here seen the original version of this film, and if so, can you tell me how it ends?" I was going to ask this because the movie ends with a postscript describing how Brown succeeded Blair in '07, but of course the original film could have said nothing about this, since it was made in '03. But then I noticed that the IMDb says the original British version of this film is 90 minutes, while the version which showed on HBO in the United States (when? what year?) is 76 minutes -- and the version that I saw on DVD last night is 79 minutes. So the film has been edited in other ways, too. So the question is ... what WERE those changes? Is there a before-and-after list anywhere on the web?

Not seen it (or even heard of it prior to opening this thread) so can't really comment on the original, but I thought it might be helpful to offer some clarification on one point. Over here, the term length isn't set like it is in the US, it can be anything under 5 years, so six years is always two elections worth, but typically most terms are about 4 years, except (like in 97) when the ruling party is going to get spanked at the election and so wants to cling on to power for as long as possible (see also Labour who won't call the next election until 2010).

I might have to dig this out now though. The Brown aspect sounds interesting. Incidentally does JOhn Smith come into this film at all? He was Blair's predecessor as leader of the Labour party, who's very premature death sent shockwaves through the country, and who, had he not died, would probably won on a far more left wing agenda than Blair had. It was also he who got rid of the union bloc voting system that had so hampered Labour over the last 2-3 decades. And he was a committed Christian in a far more open and up front way than was the norm at the time.

Matt

MattPage wrote:
: Over here, the term length isn't set like it is in the US, it can be anything under 5 years, so six years is always two elections worth, but typically most terms are about 4 years, except (like in 97) when the ruling party is going to get spanked at the election and so wants to cling on to power for as long as possible (see also Labour who won't call the next election until 2010).

Yes, it's basically the same over here.

(Then again, Stephen Harper, a Tory PM currently leading a minority government elected in 2006, signed a bit of legislation a while ago calling for fixed terms of 4 years each. However, he is now making noises about calling an election within the next several months. How can he do this, if the legislation sets fixed terms at the federal level? Because the legislation allows the Governor General to dissolve Parliament at his or her discretion, which is a power that he or she has always had -- although traditionally, the G-G has done this only at the request of the Prime Minister (notable exception: the King-Byng affair in 1926). So, theoretically, the PM could get the G-G to dissolve Parliament and thus trigger an election anyway, but maybe he'd have to find a different way of "asking" the G-G to do this than PMs have done in the past. I dunno, it's too convoluted for me.)

Anyway, I was wondering about the length of terms over there, because IIRC, the movie says Blair won elections in 1997, 2001 and 2007 -- which would seem to imply that a term can go as long as six years. But now that I check Wikipedia, I see that he won that last election in 2005 instead -- which squares with what you said about Labour holding on to power for the full five years until 2010.

: Incidentally does JOhn Smith come into this film at all? He was Blair's predecessor as leader of the Labour party, who's very premature death sent shockwaves through the country, and who, had he not died, would probably won on a far more left wing agenda than Blair had. It was also he who got rid of the union bloc voting system that had so hampered Labour over the last 2-3 decades. And he was a committed Christian in a far more open and up front way than was the norm at the time.

Yes, John Smith is one of the characters who is actually played by an actor, instead of simply seen via archival newsreel footage. (Neil Kinnock, for example, is depicted only through the newsreel footage -- just as Princess Diana was glimpsed only through newsreel footage in The Queen.)

A significant moment in the film comes when Neil Kinnock resigns as leader of the Labour party in 1992, following the Tories' surprise success under John Major, and Tony Blair urges Gordon Brown to grab the leadership of the Labour party before Smith can get it. Blair is convinced that Brown has what it would take to win an actual election, and he is frustrated by what he sees as Smith's connection or commitment to the losing ways of past Labour leaders. Brown, out of his own sense of dignity or political propriety, doesn't feel it would be right to snatch the leadership away from Smith, and so he refuses to play along. When Blair then snatches the leadership away from HIM a couple years later, Blair basically tells him, "You had your chance, and now I'M more electable, and what the Labour party needs more than anything else is to get ELECTED."

Interesting about Smith's faith. I don't think the film gets into that at all. It does, however, emphasize that Smith was well-liked, which provides a contrast of sorts to Brown's lack of what some would call "the personal touch". The point is made a few times that Brown has lost friends and driven people away from him, which seems to be the opposite of Smith. The point is also made that Brown is a bachelor engaged in at least one long-distance relationship, in contrast to Blair's married-family-man routine. (One interesting aspect of the film is the way Blair is presented as the more slippery character, in some ways, yet when something bad happens to someone -- even someone who has been standing in Blair's way, to some degree -- one of the first things he does is express seemingly genuine sympathy for the person's wife and kids. Whereas Brown, for all his loyalty to the person in question, is usually shown focusing on the political fallout from the personal tragedy, and thus does come across as a bit cold.)

I'd definitely be interested to hear what you think of this, if and when you see it.

Wikipedia has it correct. 2007 is the date when Blair retired which would have normally triggered a leadership election but as Blair had been making it clear for a number of years that Brown would be his successor there was no election as such, in fact there wasn't even really an internal labour party election as top who would be his successor as no-one ran against him (IIRC).

Certainly it's interesting the way you say the film is playing the differences in personality between Brown and Blair, given Brown's personality is currently one of the reasons that are being given for why he is so unpopular at present.

Oh and Brown married and had two children during Blair's years in power, although the first of his children died a day or two after she (?) was born.

Matt

MattPage wrote:
: Certainly it's interesting the way you say the film is playing the differences in personality between Brown and Blair, given Brown's personality is currently one of the reasons that are being given for why he is so unpopular at present.

Yeah, I just watched the interview with Stephen Frears on the DVD, which was apparently filmed late last year (or early this year), and both he and the interviewer talk about how there seems to be a genuinely "tragic" quality to Brown, and how Blair might have been accurate in perceiving that Brown was a very smart guy but didn't quite have what it took to be the leader, and how The Deal might have been a bit wrong in making Blair the villain, as it were, of the film. But I think the film version of Brown is a tragic figure in his own way, and the events that have taken place since the film was made may simply add another layer to our perception of him as a tragic figure.

Frears also talks about how he saw an interview with David Morrissey (who had already gained some weight to play Brown) on TV shortly before filming was going to begin, and how the interviewer asked Morrissey if he was going to gain weight for the role, and how Morrissey had this horrified look on his face that he might have to gain even MORE weight to resemble Brown properly. Apparently Brown wasn't too happy, either, with the suggestion that Morrissey had to gain a lot of weight in order to play him.

BTW, where does the phrase "It's the economy, stupid" come from? All these years, I assumed it came from Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign (and Wikipedia backs me up on this), but unless my memory is playing tricks with me, there is a scene in this film -- set during John Smith's leadership, between 1992 and 1994 -- where Brown tells Smith that Smith will thank him one day for that line. Did the Labour party pick this line up from Clinton and use it in their British campaigns, or something?

: Oh and Brown married and had two children during Blair's years in power, although the first of his children died a day or two after she (?) was born.

Yeah, this is mentioned in one of the bonus features as well.