A Royal Affair [Blu-ray]

Those of us who have grown up in Western democracies can hardly picture and appreciate what life under despotism and absolutism was like. Our freedoms, handed down on stone tablets to us from a secular Moses, seem permanent. They are not. Democracy is a cultural work in progress and never free from external political threat, as events in the Middle East and elsewhere almost daily remind us.The experiment in freedom is recent, most of history despotic, a canvas of blood and suffering: few rights, many evils, much injustice. Power at the top, the mass of people beneath: poor, burdened, exploited. Protective laws came slowly. But if anything jumped started the Rights of Man it was surely the French Revolution, a seismic quake in human history. Heads rolled because they had to. A bloody mess ensued, literal and figurative. But out of the chaos came a better world for millions. We are among these, the children of that revolution and those times.To see what the world looked like before that event we have this grim but fine portrait from Denmark. Johann Friedrich Struensee (1737-72) is a modern man: educated, enlightened, liberal. In other words, dangerous. German by birth, he’s a physician of the mind and spirit, as well as the body. His private patient is King Christian VII of Denmark (1749-1808), and a difficult patient he is, as he suffers from what appears to be madness.Though Struensee (played magnificently by Mads Mikkelsen) lived and died before the revolution in France, Enlightenment ideas were in the air. In particular, he was highly influenced by the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Thus the concept of the Rights of Man and the French dictum liberté, égalité and fraternité were close to him in spirit.Struensee has a problem at the court of King Christian. The king is not his only worry. So is his English wife, Queen Caroline Matilda (1751-75). Why should she worry him? Because he loves her, and she him. This is inconvenient, not to mention dangerous. But if living means taking risks, Struensee clearly chooses life, death be damned. He will love because he can. Plus the woman he loves needs his love. A simple need on the surface, but intricately complicated in practice, this film is largely about these complications — how and why they happen, and what they lead to. It’s all quite sad and beautiful.In flashback we meet young Princess Caroline (Alicia Vikander, lovely and luminous as ever) in England before her departure to Denmark. England is warm and bright, the summer sun shining. The young princess (just 16), is seen among pleasant fields with colourful flowers. She lies in the grass in her long dress and petticoats, looking up at the blue sky. In a locket round her neck she carries a miniature painting of the young Danish king, her future spouse. She dreams of the day they will meet, not far off now, as her whole young life has been a preparation for it. She also worries a little about that day. How, she wonders, will he regard me? Will he love me? Am I able to inspire his love? She is given advice by an older female member of the English court. She is told to have the king visit her bedchamber on the night of the day they meet. She should show her love from the start if she hopes to be loved in return.Contrasted with the bright, happy sun found in England, Denmark looks bleak and grey, its skies dark and forbidding. It is not yet winter, but the season is moving toward it.Their meeting is awkward. The young king — immature, nervous, insecure — is socially self-conscious. This young woman, a foreigner whom he does not know, is to be his bride and queen. He’s emotionally ill-equipped to deal with this turn of events.A feast in the palace is held for the king and queen. Everyone seems taken by Caroline, as she is charming, gracious, polite and beautiful. But behind her composed and formal smile is a nervousness she feels among these Danish strangers. Yet she follows through on the advice given to her in England. During dinner she whispers to the king that she wishes him to visit her bedchamber tonight. He assents to her wish with a nervous giggle and tense smile.Their conjugal meeting does not go well, as both are inexperienced. He is clumsy, she rigid and frightened. One can even say she is appalled by him. He has no charm and ease of manner. He is rough with her, not affectionate. He’s a spoiled child, not a man with the grace and confidence of a king. She’s petrified, trapped in a cage called arranged marriage contrived for the political expedience of others. She will have to rely on every resource within herself to survive.The king is unstable, his new wife not the cure for which the court had hoped. Dr. Struensee, whose reputation in Prussia as a modern man of medicine reaches the attention of the Danish court, is recruited to help. The work is slow but Struensee is clever and patient, his hope to win the trust of the king. This, over time, he does. A bond between them develops; the king comes to depend on Struensee for advice and support.The doctor determines the king is not mad and can be helped. His diagnosis is clear and direct: the king is frightened, burdened by responsibilities he can’t emotionally handle. Thus to survive he retreats into the shell of childhood, a place of play and playacting. Struensee seizes on this idea and turns it to the advantage of the king and country, convincing the king to see himself as an actor in a theatrical, a person destined to read lines and perform. The king warms to this idea, sees logic and truth in it. He embraces it and this in turn gives him confidence.Struensee understands his own unique position. He alone has the unconditional trust of the king. How can he use this trust to advance his Enlightenment ideas and reforms? By giving the king the courage to confront his council of governors, the privileged men who have maintained the status quo by marginalising the king. Thus, as this drama unfolds (as it did truly in history) Struensee and his ideas begin to speak through the king.Dangerous, as I’ve said, and so were the times with revolution in the air. Thus Struensee became a risk taker and for a time succeeded. For instance, he fought the council to introduce a modern smallpox vaccine to counter the smallpox plague ravaging the working poor of Copenhagen. If not stopped it would infect everyone, nobility and royalty included. Put your faith in medicine and science, he said, not superstition. The vaccine, not God, will save people.It seemed like a miracle cure. It preserved the life of the young son born to Caroline and Christian, the boy who would grow up to be King Frederick VI of Denmark (1768-1839), a great emancipator and reformer who turned Denmark (during a reign of 55 years) into a modern progressive state.So the film is about the Enlightenment, that unique time in European intellectual history. It’s also about revolution and reform, events which occurred because of the Enlightenment. Finally, and much more personally, it’s a kind of three-way love story. The king comes to love Struensee for his friendship, care and guidance. In return Struensee in his benevolent way loves the king. Then of course the romantic heart of the story, an intimate love illicit in name only, not spirit. Caroline sees his goodness and wisdom. She adores him for being a man of the Enlightenment. She sees the future in him, he the emissary of ideas that will make a better world. She can’t help falling in love with him, and he can’t help resisting her fall. So they fall together — first on the dance floor into each other’s arms, then into bed, then later into scandal, despair and oblivion.The Rights of Man was a radical idea. Rousseau said, “Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains.” He was right. Royalty and nobility held power, wealth, privilege. Those beneath the ruling class, the majority of people, were basically enslaved. The ideas of Struensee and the other philosophes survived. They made the world we live in even if we hardly ever think about it. They paid in blood for freedoms we take for granted. Why do we do this? Because the law of irony says it must be so.The end was tragic, as history records. A coup in 1772 overturned all the reforms Struensee, through King Christian, had established. The ousted old guard of councillors seized power again, politically emasculating the king. Struensee was tortured and condemned to death for both sedition and his private relations with the queen, a union which bore them a daughter (whose arrival raised the initial suspicions that led to their destruction). Struensee was publicly executed at age 32. Caroline was banished from Denmark and her children, whom she never saw again. She died, heartbroken in Germany, in 1775, aged just 23.In exile she wrote long letters to her children, explaining the life she had led and describing the life and work of Struensee. The reformer of modern Denmark, he was also the father of Princess Louise Auguste (1771-1843), their daughter. He was, Caroline wrote, along with her children, her greatest happiness in life.These letters, bundled together and carried by a confidante from Germany to Denmark, were to be read by her children when they were old enough to understand their contents. King Christian never forgot the kindness and goodness of Struensee either, passing along his doctor’s legacy to his own son, King Frederick. By the time the French Revolution was occurring in 1789, Denmark was already on the road to modernity, its history partly made by the extraordinary Johann Friedrich Struensee, true son, lover and apostle of the Enlightenment. He deserves to be better known and remembered, as this beautiful film understands.

This is a classically good costume period drama based on real events.The cinematography is good.Where the film succeeds is the unravelling of lives like a Greek tragedy. Where it fails is in the timescales and history of the story. Struensee (the physician) only held sway for a short period between 18 December 1770 and 16 January 1772 and it is difficult to fathom whether this is a political drama or a sloppy historical tale because much time is (rightly) given to his period in office. The suspected homosexuality of the king is glossed over though Enevold Brandt is sufficiently effeminately played to hint at his gay leanings. The execution of the pair does not remotely reflect the true barbarity of their final demise: hands chopped off, drawn and quartered etc. The dreadful cruel brutal feudal state that was Denmark is alluded to but also glossed over. The good works of Princess Caroline Matilda in her exile in Crelle are not mentioned and they almost certainly caused her death from Scarlet Fever. The King was (it seems) far more 'strange' than the film portrays. Struensee's skilled own legal defence is ignored entirely (cinematic licence??).This film should either have been a 'wet' 12 rating or a 'punchy' 18 rating. There is no sex, no sodomy, air brushed brutality, no sense of pounding drama. But it is well shot and does tell a good period yarn. I rate it 4 stars because despite its historical failings it is a class above those typical of its genre.

This is a Danish, Swedish and Czech co production about the life of good old mad King Christian VII of Denmark. Set in the Eighteenth Century when he needs a bride and a suitable wife is found in the English court in the form of Welsh, Caroline Mathilde played beautifully by Alicia Vikander (`Anna Kerenina'). When she arrives at court it doesn't take too long to realise that her betrothed is a bit of a cad. He has beastly table manners, rude as I don't know what and is as much fun in bed as a randy cockroach - so love was never going to blossom. But she manages to give him an heir anyway.Meantime's the somewhat eccentric King goes on a tour, or progress, of Europe where he finds himself in dire need of a physician. Enter Dr. Johan Freidrich Struensee (Mads Mikkelsen - `Casino Royale') who is by all accounts a silver tongued charmer. But apart from that appendage he also has dangerous ideas in the new thinking department - yes he is part of the enlightenment movement that is sweeping across Europe. Ideas expounded and fueled by the writings of Rousseau and Voltaire has meant a new imagination has taken hold and Queen Caroline is in for a bit of enlightening herself. So when the King decides she is too serious and that with the help of a physician she may improve her temper, Dr Struensee jumps at the chance like a school boy up for a game of conkers. What ensues is passion in the bedroom at court and intrigue that will set them on a collision course with all vested interests in Denmark.This is a sumptuous production that gets right into the very fabric of the times and is as visually rewarding as entertaining from a plot perspective. The acting is effortless in its execution, so much so that you are swept along with the entire thing. This is a film where you just lap it up. The cinematography is just brilliant and everything seems understated by what is actually unfolding on the screen. Director Nikolaj Arcel (`The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' 2009) has taken a truly unique script and made something remarkable and all the more so because of the collaboration involved. It is in Danish, English, German and French with good sub titles even though they are all in white which causes a few problems but I managed fairly well and in no way irritating enough to detract from what is a great film experience truly exceptional.