Movie Monday (or Six Degrees of Alan Bennett)

Last night, I watched The Madness of King George, the 1994 film about England's King George III a few years after he "lost the colonies." Some great acting and an interesting film, but I didn't like the way his illness was treated as something that could be driven out of him by sheer determination. The king (Nigel Hawthorne) in this film is restrained and treated like a wild dog until he submits. The doctor (Ian Holm) continues with his treatment until the king returns to full health. It is not until the credits roll that we read a sentence or two about porphyria, a disorder that King George might have suffered from, one that affects the nervous system, is hereditary, and can result in episodes of temporary "madness." So his healing is not so much a healing from the outside as a natural ending of the episode itself. If the bit about the disorder had come at the beginning of the film, it would have made a big difference to me. Nice to see Helen Mirren decked out as the queen. Whoever thought up those huge wigs and hula hoop-wide hats?

The screenplay was written by Alan Bennett whose play The History Boys I read earlier this fall and who wrote one of the next books on my "To Read" list, The Uncommon Reader.