Whether it’s Chaplin saying he wasn’t interested in Shakespeare’s plays because he didn’t care about the problems of kings and queens, or modern-day critics who won’t try to engage with a show like The Crown (or a film like Dil Dhadakne Do), there is a tendency to dismiss – or to at least feel sheepish or resentful about – creative works that try to present the conflicts in the lives of
insanely privileged people. I’m
far from enamored by, or even interested in, the British royals (though I
enjoy the real-life Philip’s nasty, politically incorrect sense of
humour), but all that was irrelevant when I watched “Paterfamilias”.
It’s beautifully structured, performed and, perhaps best of all, scored
(by Hans Zimmer), and combines grandeur with intimacy in a way that for
me recalls the similar paralleling of the lives of a father and son in
The Godfather Part II. Which, obviously, is a big compliment.------------------
And a postscript, based on a Facebook exchange: yes, I know The Crown has been a celebrated show, winning Golden Globes and Emmys among other things. I suppose what I was referring to was the general, wary reaction to this sort of glossy show in some of the circles I move in -- among viewers who prefer edgier and more grounded material like Breaking Bad.
Also, in the Indian context, some of the reactions to The Crown are inevitably and understandably linked with our feelings about our colonial past. But for me personally, it's possible to (just one example) denounce the things that people like Churchill did to countries like India as gatekeepers of the Empire, while also feeling for Churchill the individual in another terrific episode, "Assassins", where his portrait is done by Graham Sutherland. (Everyone contains multitudes etc etc)
[More on The Crown near the end of this piece, where I *health advisory alert* stand up for Padmaavat]
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