‘Notes on a Scandal’: Judi Dench’s most underrated role
Judi Dench is a legend, there’s no disputing that, but most of us associate her with her long-running part in the James Bond series as M or her period drama roles. I mean, she literally won an Oscar for her appearance as Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love.
But I’d argue that her turn in Notes on a Scandal, the 2006 film directed by Richard Eyre, is one of her greatest performances, and these days, not enough people seem aware of her genius portrayal of a cunning old teacher. Starring alongside Cate Blanchett and Bill Nighy, Dench is Barbara Covett, a miserable secondary school teacher living in London who writes in great detail about her life in her diary.
Content with being unpopular with both the students and the staff, Barbara is a sharp-talking woman with a lack of interest in really helping and bonding with the pupils, but everything changes when the beautiful Sheba, played by Blanchett, arrives at the school, with the former quickly taking a liking to her, forming a steadfast friendship. However, when Barbara catches Sheba performing a sexual act on a 15-year-old student named Steven, she makes the decision to retain their friendship and keep the secret, leading to fascinating glimpses into Sheba’s home life through Barbara’s repeated visits, which reveals a loving older husband, a son with Down’s syndrome, and a moody teenage daughter who is practically the same age as Steven.
Dench’s portrayal of Barbara sees her deliver lines from Patrick Marber’s script with precision, knowing exactly when to be witty, when to say something a little vulgar that’ll make the audience (or whoever is reading her diary) chuckle, and when to pull all of that back completely and reveal her true hideousness, standing as a protagonist who puts us in a complicated moral position, just like she is. As we watch her tell lies, manipulate people, and fail to do her job as a teacher, someone who should protect children, we’re met with a character who is simultaneously repulsive yet addictive to watch, a feat incredibly hard to master, but Dench, with her decades of experience as a versatile actor, has no issue in stepping into such a complex role.
In one terrific scene, we see her take things too far, and you start to lose any semblance of empathy for her, but then, magnificently, she brings you back, manipulating the audience as well as Sheba. When she takes her cat to the vet and discovers that it needs to be put down, she goes to Sheba to ask for support, to drop everything and come with her to the vet’s. The only thing is, Sheba must leave to watch her son in a school play, and as a mother, that’s not something she can turn down.
As Blanchett tries to keep up a soft and apologetic demeanour, Dench is fearless, grabbing Sheba’s coat and exclaiming, “Someone has died!”, but then starts to change her tune, her anger changing as though a lightbulb moment has occurred in her head – this is the perfect opportunity to manipulate, to use her knowledge of Sheba’s affair to get what she wants. “Don’t play the good mother with me,” she says coldly, her mouth moving with such disgust, even though she can hardly pretend to be morally superior.
Both are as corrupt as each other in different ways, and they find their way back to each other when Sheba is forced to move out and shelter from the press. A confrontation occurs, however, when Sheba finds Barbara’s diary, and as they fight, both physically and verbally, there’s something surprisingly childlike in Dench’s delivery at times, like when she shouts, “You don’t belong in the world, you belong here! You big baby!”
It’s a reflection of her innate patheticness, pushing her down a level and reminding us that despite her moments of terror, she is, really, just a lonely human being who wants companionship. And that’s the most tragic thing about her, the lengths she’ll go.
The part landed Dench an Oscar nomination for ’Best Actress’, but she lost out to fellow British acting royalty Helen Mirren for her appearance in The Queen. Of course, Mirren did an incredible job, but Dench as Barbara is so deliciously terrific, blurring the lines between deviously charming and absolutely reprehensible.
