99 Million Cases and Judi Dench

A vast swathe of humanity is under the Covid-19 spell with many infected and many have died and are dying. More than ninety-nine million cases and 2.1 million deaths todate.

Judi Dench (left) is one remarkable actor – in fact, she’s very accomplished and has been bestowed with many deserving accolades. 

Among her major awards, she has won an Academy Award, a Tony, two Golden Globe Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, four television BAFTA Awards, and seven Laurence Olivier Awards. 

On Friday, I came across a piece about Dench written by Xan Brooks and published in UK’s The Guardian. It was about how she’s managing life in lockdown. 

One interesting thing that came out from the phone interview that Brooks had with Dench was the fact that she has been portrayed as a UK “national treasure”. 

I didn’t know that – but I'm promising myself to re-visit some of her movies she has made over the years. These include Philomena (2013), Notes on a Scandal (2006), and Mrs Brown (1997). 

Of course, who can forget Shakespeare in Love (1998) where Dench won her Oscar for this small role as Queen Elizabeth I, the white-faced Gloriana who is a quasi-goddess. 

With telepathic ease, she senses that Viola (Gwyneth Paltrow) has had an affair with Joseph Fiennes’s Shakespeare. She crisply says to Colin Firth, playing Viola’s thin-lipped fiance, Wessex: “You’re a lordly fool! She’s been plucked since I saw her last, and not by you. It takes a woman to know it”. 

And as a James Bond fan, Skyfall (2012) is memorable and is one of Dench’s most satisfying, and unexpected, performances. 

Having played Bond’s spy chief M a number of times, this character and her portrayal suddenly flowers in this film. She is now the Bond girl who means most to him, and their relationship has a mother/son intimacy and intensity you wouldn’t expect to see in a Bond movie.  

Anyway, coming back to her interview, she told Brooks she especially detested being described as a national treasure and who can blame her, he wrote. As he said, “it’s reductive and condescending. It puts lead boots on her feet”. 

Dench herself conceded: “For one thing, it’s a terrible label. So dusty, so dreary. For another, it relegates me to being an 86-year-old woman. Whereas in my mind’s eye, I’m 6ft and willowy and about 39”. 

She certainly has this candid yet charming honesty about her that I like! 

She isn’t ready to give up on life and her retort “And fuck being 86 years old” sums up her attitude about her own outlook on life! LOL, I loved it!