Uff da

Schadenfreude is the sensation of pleasure upon perceiving the pain of others. The predominate feeling I got when we went to see a matinee show of The Queen this weekend was something close to the opposite - a feeling of pain in sympathy for the grief that another person was inflicting upon themselves. Up around Minnesota and thereabouts, when one sees someone else stub their toe or drop their change down the gutter the common expression that one employs is uff da. The sense is that one could imagine the same kind of thing happening to oneself as well.

In the context of this film, watching the royals persist doggedly to go in one direction while the larger part of their subjects were going down another, stuck in a kind of behavior once felt to be admirable and dignified but which later was to be viewed as arrogant and callous, elicited dread in me for the harm they were bringing upon themselves. Maybe if they were portrayed as more culpable and scheming, rather than simply mean-spirited and out of touch, I could take some satisfaction in their comeuppance, but at the climax of the film, my sentiments were such that I wanted them to find their way out of the mess they were in. Uff da, that's a bad thing to have so many think so poorly of you.