The Madness of King George. - movie reviews

National Review, Jan 23, 1995 by John Simon

ALAN BENNETT'S delightful play The Madness of King George III has survived the transfer from stage to screen, and emerges equally enjoyable on film. When you consider how very few stage works make it in the movies, and how very few of those have any artistic merit, this is happy news indeed.

Something must, by definition, be lost in such a sea change. The Madness of King George (the film title jettisons the numeral) concerns the dementia that affected England's King George III, which is now believed to have been caused by porphyria, a metabolic imbalance that produces all the symptoms of mental illness. It was a curious business, what with the King reigning from 1760 to 1820, losing and regaining his senses until the final ten years of total obnubilation. It is helpful to read Alan Bennett's Introduction to the stage version, in which he discusses exactly what departures he made from historical fact, and gives his personal opinions on many of the personages involved. The play and the movie, though not strict history, then, remain for the most part faithful to the spirit of the story.

The play was more--how to put it?--theatrical. There was for instance prolepsis, wherein a doctor from the future was brought on to explain the King's illness. Furthermore, the ghastly tortures to which the King was subjected in the name of a medical science that, at the time, had not the vaguest notion of how to treat the illness in question, loomed much more terrifying on stage. Even confinement in a wooden chair by means of straps is scarier when performed by a live actor.

But there are other respects in which the film comes out ahead. Since the subject is, to a large extent, the discrepancy between the pomp and circumstance of rule and the sundry forms of pettiness in the monarch's private life, it helps if the splendors of royalty can be shown to the audience. Even if Arundel Castle (for the exteriors) and Wilmot House and Broughton Castle (for the interiors) aren't quite Windsor Castle, they seem to these uninitiated eyes close enough. And in the London scenes, which the film recreates in situ, there is all the panoply of uniforms, coaches, Parliament in session, and the rest.

Here, then, are Queen Charlotte, who has to fight and scheme to be admitted to the King's presence; Pitt, the prime minister, and his Whig sidekicks; Fox, leading the Tory opposition to ensconced Whiggery; the Prince of Wales and Duke of York acting sniffy or conniving; the menservants of the King fretting over his urine, which has turned blue; the King's physicians examining the royal stool and arguing with ludicrous ferocity about what's to be done. And here is "the Farmer King" himself, a basically decent albeit garrulous and dullish fellow, trying to fight off his illness and those who would turn it to their profit.

I am sorry that the film cut the clownish pair, Sir Boothby Skrymshir and his doltish nephew, but it compensates with an array of other minor characters who add denseness to the texture. What helps immeasurably is that Mr. Bennett wrote the screenplay, and that the gifted young stage director Nicholas Hytner also directed the movie. It is his first film, but it hardly looks like the work of a neophyte, though the expert production design by the marvelous Ken Adam and the fullblooded photography of Andrew Dunn lend considerable support.

Most important, Mr. Hytner was able to persuade the reluctant Nigel Hawthorne to recreate his George III on screen. This is one of those performances that engrave themselves on the memory: Mr. Hawthorne has a wonderfully warm, fleshy, pawky, rubicund face, with an unhandsome potato nose and small, restless eyes. But there is such canny vitality in his regard, such bantering bonhomie or indignant peckishness in his voice, such bouncy sprightliness in his movements, that you find yourself ducking without benefit of 3-D technology when he lunges at you, smiling conspiratorially at his little victories, amused by his absurd idiosyncrasies, and very nearly suffering his torments.

There are sterling performances from Helen Mirren as the frisky, German-accented Queen; Julian Wadham as a glacially ironic Pitt; Ian Holm as Dr. Willis, whose unorthodox early psychotherapeutic methods, though brutal, proved effective; Rupert Everett, whose Prince of Wales is so foppish he seems to exist in slow motion; Rupert Graves as Greville, a young equerry whose amiability bursts at the oddest moment; Amanda Donohoe as a Lady Pembroke as savvy as she is sexy; and not a few talented others. Only Jim Carter's Fox seems to me a little low on charisma. But this is as fun-filled a history (or near-history) lesson as anyone could wish for.