Screen Scene
SCREEN SCENE
By John Carlos Cantu
The Madness of King George
[1995. Directed by Nicholas Hytner. Cast Nigel Hawthorne, Helen Mirren, lan Holm. The Samuel Goldwyn Company. 105 mins.]
According to the age-old cliché, uneasy lays the head that wears a crown. But in the case of England's George III (1760-1820), what was going on inside that head is at least as interesting as the crown itself.
One of the few genuinely witty political films to be made this decade, The Madness of King George tums the clever trick of giving us an insight into royal psychology that is all the equal of history's political tug war. Struck by a host of neurological symptoms that eventually manifest themselves as gushes of rambling gibberish, George's mental illness was one the more puzzling medical mysteries of the 18th century.
When the king clearly becomes unstable, his retinue is polarized into bedchamber factions. One group steadfastly supports him and the other casts its weight behind his scheming eldest son, the Prince of Wales. The royal gutchecking that occurs through the balance of the film follows in the tradition of English period pieces such as Becket, The Lion in Winter, and A Man For All Seasons.
Like these earlier films concerned with royal prerogatives, The Madness of King George sheds fascinating light on the British monarchy. But the film's historical center rests upon two interrelated issues that occupied the late-18th century English empire. Caught between the implications of the burgeoning industrial revolution and the loss of the American colonies, England was in the midst of a crucial transition on the way to a democratic society even as her politicians delicately threaded their way towards a constitutional monarchy. It is these buffeting tides of history- coupled with George's untimely hereditary illness - that brings the government to near collapse.
What's most outstanding about Nicholas Hytner's direction, and Alan Bennett's adaptation of his Royal National play, is each man's subtle balancing of these crises against the mental illness of the stricken monarch. England's political future is waged in the guise of the Parliamentary dueling between William Pitt and Charles James Fox; while the inexplicable mental illness that strikes their head of state is sketched in man, as well as political, terms. The glory of The Madness of King George is that it manages to keep these several cultural, political, and social stories running simultaneously while not overshadowing the all-important human dimension of the narrative.
As played by Nigel Hawthorne, George is a font of raving energy. Playing his mad sovereign solely through his eyes and eyebrows, Hawthorne's close-ups do a king's service. He rules the picture through volcanic asides as simple as cast away quizzical glances. And his performance is one of those exceedingly rare cinematic achievements that demands viewing on the wide screen.
In the film's touching (and in many ways, daring) climax, the convalescing king and his privy counselor read aloud passages of King Lear. At this moment, The Madness of King George achieves a moral sobriety that is unequivocally one of the most touching scenes in recent memory. Lear has his Regan, and George has his Wales: The parallels of shifting royal prerogatives and raw political power hinge on the aspirations - as well as delusions - of the frailest of temperaments.
Watching the flashes of mangled intelligence that lurk behind Hawthorne's eyes gives King George a heroism he may or may not have possessed in actuality. But what is undeniable is Hawthorne's bravery in the labor of a life time.
ED WOOD
[1994. Directed by Tim Burton. Cast Johnny Depp, Martin Landau, Sarah Jessica Parker. Hollywood Pictures Touchstone Video. 124 mins.]
The first bomb of Tim Burton's career comes from a subject close to his heart. Yet in a fitting way, the very fact that this film has failed (at least according to box office receipts) is a backhanded compliment to Hollywood. Because Ed Wood is not a failure in any artistic sense. Rather, the fact that the movie-going public has ostensibly ignored this film biography is an altogether fitting epitaph for a talent that was as marginal as it was equally persistent.
If the average person tells himself that he would someday like to "make" movies, Edward D. Wood Jr. went more than one step further. He did make movies. And among his efforts were motion pictures so patently unsuccessful they have not only have earned consistent reviews as the worst films ever made; far more important, their cinematic ineptitude calls the whole auteur theory of filmmaking into serious question. For surely no one in his right mind would make movies as terribly produced, directed, and acted as Glen or Glenda (1953); Jail Bait (1954); Bride of the Monster (1955); Plan 9 From Outer Space (1956); and/or The Sinister Urge (1960).
Or would he...?
Like the best of our culture's junk food, there's something delightful about the unvarnished low-brow taste of Wood 's fare- and his work was plenty low-brow. These are movies so bad; they're good in a kitschy cum campy fashion.
Not that Burton wants fully to emulate his inspiration; because Ed Wood is indeed a very good movie. Unfortunately, it's also a movie that tríes to be one thing while doing another. Yet perhaps this is also proper because Burton would be hard pressed to deliver a film to his distributor that is as inept as the talent of hts main character.
Although, admittedly, he runs as close to the rim as perilously possible. Start with Johnny Depp. This talented actor is simply wrong for the role of Ed Wood. There's a soulful vitality to his performance that is a little too-well-scrubbed to be the King of the "B flicks."
No, to do this film justice, Burton would have had to hop in a time machine and coax the single actor who actually bore a resemblance to the real Ed Wood: Errol Flynn. Take a good look at The Adventures of Robin Hood and try to imagine Flynn wearing an angora sweater and stiletto heels. He'd be in like...Wood, er, Flynn, indeed.
By contrast, Martin Landau's uncanny performance as Bela Lugosi shines with a dynamic authenticity through the film. He's the heart of the movie and the story wouldn't suffer one whit if the film had been named after him. The relationship between the easily impressionable Wood and the drug-addled Lugosi serves as the movie's emotional center of gravity.
Everyone else in the cast - with Bill Murray's keen Bunny Breckinridge standing out smartly from the second-line - is a menagerie of losers that actually achieve greatness through their sheer dent of effort. From the sulking Vampira (Lisa Marie) to television's fake psychic, Criswell (Jeffrey Jones), to hulking monster, Tor Johnson (George "the Animal" Steele), Burton sketches a group portrait that is as lovably loony as they are patently oddballs.
Indeed, even the miscast Depp goes along manfully for the ride. But unlike his lonely outcast in Burton's earlier Edward Scissorhands, he's gotten a much tougher assignment here: Find the normality of a schlockmiester whose unquestioning love for movies led him to make films that are still excruciating to watch today.
Fun, maybe. A hoot, for sure. But make no mistake: These movies are near-deranged amateur filmmaking that is laughably close to incompetent. Yet between Wood's remarkably misplaced optimism and Lugosi's doomed noble forbearance, Ed Wood takes off - with or without the American public- as a heartfelt homage to a has-been that never was.
RATING KEY
Acting
Cinematography
Direction
Editing
Narrative
Sound
Special Effects
When a symbol appears following a title, the corresponding category is a strength of the movie.