Stars: Alicia Vikander, Mads Mikkelsen, Mikkel Boe Folsgaard, Trine Dyrholm, David Dencik
Director: Nikolaj Arcel
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Foreign Language Film-Denmark)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars
In our final OVP film of 2012 (write-ups commence tomorrow), we encounter yet another royal epic, this time in historical Denmark. In a refreshing case for American viewers, who are predominantly treated to British, French, and Russian monarchies, we got a bit of a history lesson on the Danish monarchy.(To quote Britta Perry, real life doesn't need spoilers, but I'm going to give the alert anyway) The film tells the tale of King Christian VII (Folsgaard) and his bride, Queen Caroline Matilda (Vikander), and their marriage. What initially seems to be a tale of a beautiful princess going to a foreign land (you have to love the cameo by Harriet Walter as Augusta, Princess of Wales, as she would later play the princess's granddaughter-in-law in The Young Victoria) becomes a tale of a woman dealing with a mad king and slowly trying to find a sense of enlightenment in a castle where she is nothing but a prisoner.
The king is clearly mentally unhinged, and becomes worse throughout the film, to the point where the court needs a doctor to keep him in-line. This opens the room for Struensee (Mikkelsen, a bit too macabre-looking to ever be taken as a truly romantic lead, but let's stretch the imagination for a moment), a simple country doctor to become a favorite of the king's through their mutual love of Shakespeare, and soon Struensee finds himself climbing up the social ladder at court, partnering with the Queen as both a lover and the leader of the country, and using King Christian as a puppet.
As history has taught us, cheating on a king is always a terrible idea, and Struensee finds himself on the wrong side of an executioner before long. A coup is orchestrated by Queen Juliane Marie (Dyrholm, who is excellent, and is becoming a bit of recurring player at the Oscars considering she also starred in the winning In a Better World), and eventually Caroline Matilda is imprisoned and her lover jailed, with the king now resigned to being nothing but a figurehead in his kingdom.
It's a bit of a downer of an ending, even if we see that Christian and Caroline Matilda's son eventually becomes a strong king, giving many of the ideas of his mother a home in the country and bringing Denmark into enlightenment. However, that's how history sometimes works, and though it skips some of the more amusing anecdotes of this story (Caroline Matilda, for example, famously dressed in men's clothing as she gained more authority in the kingdom, and frequently spoke with her brother George III, who largely shunned her to Celle when he probably could have brought her back to England, and would later also be called a mad king), it seems relatively accurate to real-life events.
The film is overlong and staid, though it is beautiful (the costuming and the cinematography are elegant and glossy). The film most comes alive whenever Folsgaard is on-screen. The king is obviously a bit of a loose cannon, which can make him occasionally uncomfortable to watch, but he's always magnetic-you can see the way that even as a mad man with an infantile level of learning, he still demands awed decorum and command. Dyrholm's Queen Dowager also demands the screen, but she is given little to do as a character other than to menace and to try and take the throne for her weak-backboned son (and I have to just quickly complain, but she would be addressed as "her majesty," not her "royal highness" as the Queen Dowager, which is a mistake that is regularly made in films).
The problem thus lies with the two main characters, both of whom don't emote enough to maintain our attention. Mikkelsen has the more interesting character of the two, but he can't project enough and doesn't really show any passion for what he is doing. He seems to be too obsessed with brooding to actually find his romantic leading man and inner-revolutionary. Additionally, Vikander's young queen seems too clever in other scenes to be so cavalier with her bedchamber. The real life Caroline Matilda seemed to be a bit more foolish, but as that wouldn't play well in a film, the director ignores this character flaw, making her less interesting and the film a bit without motive. Also, the age difference between the two (over twenty years) is not once commented on, but it's definitely got an ick factor to it if we're supposed to buy into their love, few questions asked.
Those are my thoughts on the movie, but how about yours? Did you find A Royal Affair to be corset-filled fun, or a bit of a drag? Are you also becoming a bit enamored with Dyrholm and her increased presence in American art houses? And what film do you think should have won the Best Foreign Language Film of 2012?
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