Ils ont jugé la reine

For many reasons, more than a docu-drama. But a fine portrait of wars between categories, values, cruelty, power, crowd and painful- deep loneleness. A queen, the last of France, and her last days of life. Manipulation and hate. Basic traits of French Revolution and the rivalries defining it. A trial and a sentence. And the Great Terror. A well crafted story , with powerful moral, reminding, in some aspects, in some measure, the trial and death of Charles I Stuart or the exile and execution of Romanovs. Short, portrait of evil and its victims, its implacable work and result.

Sympathetic to the ex-queen of France, played with great dignity, and to her unfortunate son who only survived her by 21 months, the film shows her harsh imprisonment, forced to have male guards in her cell, and the farcical trial that resulted in her execution in October 1793. Though mentioning the revolutionary regime's precarious situation, under attack by external powers and internal rebels, the decision to hold a trial with its almost mandatory death sentence is ascribed to power politics among the revolutionary elite.

With grim glee, an epilogue recounts how almost everybody involved in the proceedings ended up under the guillotine as well. Though the writers do not suggest that the ancien regime monarchy was good for the country, then or now, they regret the betrayal of the ideals of the revolution, ending after rivers of blood in a dictatorship. In sticking close to known facts, the film is perhaps more of a visual history lesson than a human drama embodying flesh and blood people.