In The Age Of Tweeter
Rant-Defend The Enlightenment Like Your Life Depended On-It Does-“A Royal
Affair” (2012) Better-“En Kongelig Affaere”-A Film Review
DVD Review
BY Fritz Taylor
“A Royal Affair” Better-“En
Kongelig Affaere”
I have on more than one
occasion mentioned that I am a child of rock and roll, a child of the classic
age of rock in the 1950s which was the first jailbreak movement that led my
Generation of ’68 “astray” (in the very best sense of the word). I am, as
becomes more necessary to declare each day in this crazy world of alternate
facts, lies, and low-grade bullshit as my grandfather was fond of saying when
he was pissed off at what passed for civil discourse in his time, a child of
the Enlightenment. Yes the 18th century movement of men and women
who under great pressure (and maybe the pains of torture and exile) tried to
bring some rational discourse to the way people were governed, the way people
in civil society dealt with other and some kind of funny idea that equality of
person was something humankind could and should aspire to achieve.
Now being a good old boy
growing up from down in Fulton County, Georgia there was no way that I started
out life as a child of the Enlightenment unlike the ease which I slipped into
being a child of rock and roll. That my friends came courtesy of Uncle Sam,
specifically his “request” that I lay down my life for him in the jungles of
Vietnam back in1966-1967. (That “request” business really a gag since I
volunteered under duress, the duress being directed from a military proud
grandfather, the same one fond of saying low-grade bullshit when he was pissed,
although subsequently I would come to understand that almost every young man of
my Generation of ’68 made decisions under duress under the thunder clouds of a
seemingly endless war.)
I was as gung-ho as any
previous generation of Taylor male-until-until I got over there, got in
-country and came to realize before my eighteen months tour was over (I
extended for another six months against the normal year to get an early out
they were offering both to get re-ups and to get grunts to stay in country against
all good sense) that I had no quarrel with these people and nobody else really
did either. That would lead to my post-military service “conversion” to getting
on the right side of the angels, getting to understand a whole bunch of stuff
like the Enlightenment, a word when I was a kid I had probably never heard
of-certainly didn’t act upon any of its ideas. Those lessons though just didn’t
come out of the blue but through my involvement with Vietnam Veterans Against
the War (VVAW), you know, the organization ex-Secretary of State John Kerry
helped organize in his sunnier days and through coming north to Boston and then
west to Frisco. My first “tutor” has a name, the late Peter Paul Markin who I
met down in Washington on a G.I. anti-war march and when he fell down of his
hubris and what he called “wanting habits” writers here like Sam Lowell, Seth
Garth and Josh Breslin picked up the slack.
Now what does all of this
talk of Enlightenment have to do with reviewing a Danish film, in English A Royal Affair assigned to me by site
manager Greg Green for whatever reason he thought I would be suitable for doing
such heavy lifting. Folks that have seen my name here know that I am something
of a military and social justice writer and not a damn film reviewer like Sam
Lowell who has spent his whole freaking career blasting out pieces about every
kind of god-awful film. The “hook” Greg used was that part of the plot-line of
the film was an attempt by people at the Danish court, royal or otherwise to
bring Enlightenment values to that benighted country out in the boondocks of
Europe and others with vested property and proprietary interest to stop them. I
accepted the assignment on that basis maybe in the back of my head figuring I
could control my ranting about the damn tweeter storms that have racked civil
society in America to its core.
Oh yes, I better confess if
that is the right word that beside being a child of rock and roll and of the
Enlightenment I am a child of republican (small “r” please note) meaning I
defend various forms of republican governmental rule against monarchies,
constitutional or otherwise, royalty, the nobility and every damn hanger-on who
floats to the surface. So why accept the assignment. Simple that republican
ideal was not so-widespread in the middle of the 18th century the
time of story-line of this film. At that time Enlightenment ideas were just
raising their head in the world and got germinated in the bowels of the old
society by certain free-thinking people. So this hatred of the monarchy, remember
please King George III all you Jacks and Jills who devour everything coming out
of English court-life these days has been an acquired taste for generations
coming down to me. The characters here, some of them commoners some royal,
don’t question that aspect of governance-that is for later times and larger
uprisings than court intrigues.
I have taken a particular
slant on this production based on some historical truths around bringing
Enlightenment ideas to backwater Denmark. The film itself based on a Danish historical
novel about the times-about the sullen reign of mentally disturbed King
Christian VII, his English princess wife and a commoner, a doctor goes into
another direction and I could if I was Sam Lowell, better, Laura Perkins, have
dwelled on the menange between the three chief characters and left it at that.
The frame for this one cries out for that treatment since the whole affair,
royal or otherwise, is presented from Queen Caroline Matilde’s point of view as
she writes to her children on her deathbed about why she has not seen them for
a long time.
I have had my say so as Sam
always says a little summary is in order. Christian and Caroline, who are
cousins, but what else is new with European royal in-breeding. Those
interconnections never stopped them from cutting each other to bits. World War
I could have just as easily been called the “Cousins’ war” which for its time
was the bloodiest conflagration ever seen. A betrothal was arranged and
Caroline became the Danish queen having a son by the king. The king who was
probably every psychiatrist’s poster child for an assortment of strange mental
disturbances was more of a whoremonger and frill than a husband to the
well-educated and talented Caroline. That is the predicate for the personal
tragedies that follow. Doctor Struensee, a commoner, a German which meant a
foreigner then, a low-key man of the Enlightenment was brought in to attend to
the king. They became fast friends once the good doctor saw he could have
influence over the erratic king in order to push his agenda. Problem, big
problem, is that over time Struensee and Caroline become fast friends, very
fast indeed, having a child together, a girl who is passed off as the king’s
progeny.
That cuckolded king notion
lets the anti-foreign, anti-reform
nobility and another arm of the royal family take the high ground
spreading rumors among the common folk that the doctor is running the show and
the Queen is egging him on. In the end the threads favoring the Enlightenment
were too weak to hold against the old regime and so the doctor and Queen meet
bad ends, bad fates. Her losing her children and exile and the Doc having his
head taken from him by the executioner’s axe. The only hope is for the
future-that the younger generation in the person of the royal prince will do
better. And he does. Such are the vagaries of history. Well-done with English
subtitles, a tight script and beautiful film work.
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