Media shape our lives. And ever since JFK didn’t make it to Dallas Trade Mart, we face live (or almost live) presence of defining moments which everybody remembers. Everybody knows where they were and what they were doing when they heard Neil Armstrong pronouncing his rehearsed “one small step for a man”, or, more recently, when they learned about 9/11.

Or when Diana died.

Diana, Princess of Wales, a high profile celebrity beloved and abused by press, was killed in a car accident in a Paris tunnel, hunted by paparazzi in late August 1997. Those who followed her since she got to know Prince Charles, were with her in her final moments, so the tabloids could feed every voyeuristic braincell on the planet its urge to see, judge and gossip.

And now there is a movie about this tragic accident, or rather, what followed between the Windsors, Downing Street and the public (again, primarily represented by the press). It is a movie about inevitable change that modern world brings, when news are being covered as they happen, instantaneously and with a hype that sells.

Diana, no longer a member of the royal family, but by far most popular of the royals, dies. The queen (Helen Mirren) and the rest of the family spends the week after her death in their summer retreat at Balmoral Castle, quietly coping with circumstances. However, increasing media frenzy pushes the newly appointed prime minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) to intervene and “advise” the Queen in order to save the royals “from themselves”. So Diana gets a public funeral, Union Jack is flown at half mast over Buckingham Palace and our monarch even addresses her nation in live televised statement.

I have to come to terms with two feelings I experienced while watching this flick; first, magical and subtle performance by Helen Mirren, who collected quite a few awards for her role and more are definitely coming, and, second, slight and bearable, but still constantly present, boredom. That, of course, only because I’m not a die-hard docudrama fan. Because, as I realize, this is one of the best rated movies of the year.

Still, to a certain extent, I understand this movie a bit differently to others. I don’t see The Queen only as a play on a change of values or traditional principles and standards, but also as a exclamation of increasing media power in the globalised society. The power that can easily shift values and stands, wherever they’re good or not.