A superlative drama. By now, most sophisticated movie-goers are aware that King George III's sickness might very well have been a result of porphyria, a hereditary disease that some doctors have traced back to Mary, Queen of Scots (i.e., George III's great-great-great-great-great grandmother). Whatever the cause, Nigel Hawthorne gives the performance of a lifetime as the tortured king. The conflict between George III and his heir, the Prince of Wales (the eventual King George IV), is brutally and unapologetically portrayed: the director does not spare us in his vivid reenactment of the combative and sour relationship that actually existed between the two men. As an American, one might suspect I'd be unsympathetic to the British monarch who presided over England's attempt to brutalize its colonies -- but George III's almost-wistful resentment of his errant "colonists" generates some sympathy for the man himself - a sympathy which is unexpectedly intensified by Hawthorne's sudden descent into incoherence, his dim, yet aching realization of what he has become, and his eventual recovery. George III was haunted by demons not of his own making; and no human being deserves the fate to which his disease, if such it was, eventually condemned him. "The Madness of King George" enlightened, entertained,and provoked: what more could one ask of a film?
Review of The Madness of King George
