With a plethora of much newer releases to choose from, I usually don’t reach back nearly 15 years to watch a film that wasn’t a Best Picture winner (or even nominee), but that’s precisely what I did when I recently rented The Madness of King George, which was released way back in 1994. There were a couple of external factors that prompted my decision, so this wasn’t entirely out of the blue. For one thing, I’m currently reading the biography John Adams by David McCullough, and of course King George III is mentioned in that work. Second, I just got done listening to a series of lectures about some great historical figures in Europe that also made mention of George III’s “madness”, so my curiosity was piqued.
However, despite the fact that the film received some pretty good reviews when it first came out, I found it rather slow and uneventful. To be sure, I wasn’t expecting a shoot ‘em up action flick, but at least a few interesting events would have been welcome.
Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The story begins in the year 1788 and proposes to show the rapid decline of King George III’s (played by Nigel Hawthorne) mental powers. A few opening scenes show George III as a monarch still respected by members of his family and court, as they jump to with every “Wot, wot!” that he utters.
Clearly, George III has a few eccentricities of character, such as the fact that he flies off the handle at any mention of the American colonies having won their independence and that he likes to make everyone listen to extremely long renditions of “Greensleaves” rung on bells, but for the most part he seems pretty functional. Queen Charlotte (Helen Mirren) and several of the king’s valets are indulgent, but the Prince of Wales (Rupert Everett), who is next in line to the throne, is anxious to show that his father is not fit to run the country.
Indeed, as the film progresses, George III’s outbursts become more frequent and more serious. He wakes in the middle of the night to accost women in the palace and he runs through the fields in the morning wearing nothing but his nightshirt, all while failing to grasp the extent of his improprieties. Finally, Dr. Willis (Ian Holm), a man known for successfully dealing with mental infirmities, is called in to see what he can do about George.
The rest of the film then deals with Dr. Willis’s attempts to cure George III using the primitive diagnostic and treatment techniques available in the 18th century. In addition, significant time is given to the way prominent members of Prominent jockeyed for position after sensing that the king was seriously ill.
My Reaction: To be honest, it was very hard for me to get involved with any of the characters in this film, which made the whole thing hard to watch. First of all, since everyone was wearing 18th-century costumes and wigs, it was very difficult to keep track of who was who. Yes, I know I can’t fault the filmmakers for using period costumes, but it was still a real problem for me. The least the filmmakers could have done was make sure that the characters addressed each other by name to help viewers keep the characters straight!
Another issue I had with this film was the fact that George III’s improprieties seemed rather tame — at least by today’s standards. So he inappropriately grabbed women and ran around in his underwear? Sure, those actions by a modern monarch would cause a scandal, but I doubt anyone would declare him “mad”. I was hoping to see how the king’s mental state impacted his rule of the country; however, that never happened. It could be because Parliament had a lot of control in those days or something, but again, it would have been nice if this had been made clear in the film.
Really, I don’t have much else to say about The Madness of King George. It wasn’t at all what I expected, but that surely has more to do with my personal tastes than anything else. Nevertheless, I give this film just 5.0 stars out of 10.