Nigel Hawthorne makes an ailing monarch funny, difficult and painfully vulnerable in Nicholas Hytner’s assured period drama. We recommend it for the acting and Alan Bennett’s wit, with reservations about its faith in firm-handed authority.
The Madness of King George is a funny, humane period drama with one substantial reservation: it is too ready to trust the man who promises to impose order. Nicholas Hytner and screenwriter Alan Bennett make a king’s illness the occasion for political comedy without treating his suffering as a joke. Their subject is what happens when a court organised around royal authority has to cope with a monarch who cannot depend on his own mind. Nigel Hawthorne makes that predicament matter.
Hawthorne lets George III be prickly and amusing without asking us to find everything about him endearing. The wit belongs to someone accustomed to being heard, and its persistence as his confidence falters is painful. We were moved by his struggle to maintain the king’s self-possession while those around him calculate what his illness might mean for them. Hawthorne allows sweetness into the performance without smoothing away the habits of command. We remain interested in this difficult man even when he cannot control how he presents himself.
Helen Mirren’s Queen Charlotte supplies an affection that does not require the king to be agreeable first. Her presence helps keep the illness personal when the political manoeuvring threatens to take over. Rupert Everett’s Prince of Wales belongs to the sharper comedy of royal status, where concern and advantage are difficult to separate. Bennett gives the cast language worth listening to, and Hytner leaves enough room for its humour without making every exchange sound like an audition for the last word.
Andrew Dunn’s cinematography keeps the interiors composed and orderly, making the king’s distress harder to overlook. Ken Adam’s production design gives the people defending royal dignity convincingly grand surroundings to defend it in. The outdoor passages provide welcome space after the controlled indoor scenes, and Hytner uses the contrast to keep the film from feeling confined to its conversations. The splendour is pleasurable, though it can make the court seem more deserving of affection than its behaviour warrants.
Tariq Anwar’s editing keeps the political exchanges brisk without hurrying past Hawthorne’s vulnerability. That pace matters in a film moving so often between verbal comedy and suffering. A few of Bennett’s polished lines announce themselves rather too clearly, but the acting usually makes them sound like something a person wants to say. George Fenton’s music is sympathetic, occasionally more reassuring than the performance needs. Hawthorne is quite capable of making us care without assistance.
The reservation concerns Willis, played by Ian Holm, and the film’s confidence in his discipline. Holm makes the doctor’s certainty persuasive; Bennett is less searching about the power that certainty gives him over an unwell patient. The film is alert to the self-interest of courtiers, but less inclined to question authority when it arrives as treatment. We need not demand modern attitudes from a historical drama to wish it were more curious about the difference between helping someone and securing his obedience.
Costume dramas can ask the furnishings to sustain our interest long after the people have ceased to do so. Here the actors keep justifying our attention, and the jokes make the distress more bearable without making it trivial. Watch it for Hawthorne, and leave some room to disagree with the doctor.
