Unless you’re someone like me who has read a lot of Shakespeare, the average American doesn’t know a whole heck of a lot about many English monarchs. Pressed, they can probably name Richard the Lionheart, Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and II, and Victoria without too much issue. But then there’s George III, king during the American Revolution, someone often cited as the primary reason for the Revolution due to his taxation without representation and the like. Now, as a kid, I did read a book on that war that stated George III had little if anything to do with repressive taxes, that it was all the work of the Prime Minister of the time (whose name I do not recall), and all complaints to “King George” from the Founding Fathers was more due to his symbolic representation as the King of England and Head of State. Oh, and there was always talk George wasn’t right in the head.
That last idea had some basis in reality, but not until after the United States became an independent nation and is the basis for the play and movie The Madness of King George.
George III (Nigel Hawthorne) is acting a little eccentric. He doesn’t seem to remember that the American colonies are now an independent nation, and he’s leading the men of the palace in his own military drills to retake them when he isn’t running around in his undergarments. His queen (Helen Mirren) is a loving wife and mother of 15, but his behavior is getting a bit worse. There’s just one problem for the king: the Prince of Wales, another George (Rupert Everett), knows he can be made Regent if his father becomes incapacitated. The king is often highly critical of his son, and the young man has secretly married a woman, something that is doubly illegal given he both neglected to get his father’s permission and the woman is Catholic.
By the by, that “must get the monarch’s permission to marry if a member of the royal family” thing is still true today.
Regardless, the Prince has a political ally who wants to do things like abolish slavery and have better relations with America, so he does what any loving son would do and sets his father up for a big public display of erratic behavior, enough to get the king, for lack of a better term, committed to a psychiatric facility.
Now, mental health is still something we don’t understand much in the 21st century. What does or doesn’t cause mental illnesses is at best a good guess in many cases. It was much less well-known in the 18th century. Understanding physical or mental health is clearly lacking for the king: his doctor at one point dismisses a servant who points out the king’s urine is blue as an unimportant fact offered by an ignorant layperson. So, the movie plays into the crisis that is how to treat a king for an illness no one really understands. Likewise, it doesn’t go well for a man who is very much used to getting his way. Most of the attendants are not exactly gentle, and even the ones that are can only do so much. George spends much of the movie isolated and confused, the Queen kept far away from him, and a stern Dr. Francis Willis (Ian Holm) isn’t exactly a man who takes orders from patients no matter who the patient is.
The central conflict for the film comes down whether or not the King can get well enough to prevent his son from taking over. And as much as it is the king, it’s still a rather low stakes thing in the grand scheme of things. At the end of the movie, George seems to understand his role is largely symbolic. He and the rest of the family need to publicly present a united front. That means a lot of things need to be swept under the rug. The greatest threats are to national morale and whatever connections the King has to the Prime Minister from the looks of things. Instead, this is a personal story about a powerful man laid as low as it was possible to be, and the way said man can perhaps claw his way back in an era of low understanding. The man may be a symbol of his nation, but in the end, he’s still just a man. It’s just that when a king goes through those indignities, it is so much worse as a result, and Hawthorne plays the role beautifully.
Grade: A-
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