A United Kingdom
A United Kingdom
Royal romances have always had a way of capturing the public imagination, be it Edward VIII’s abdication to marry divorcee Wallace Simpson, or Prince Harry’s Toronto- based girlfriend Meghan Markle. And as those couples show, the greater the class disparity, the more the public eats it up.
But the marriage of Ruth Williams and Seretse Khama was both a head- t urner and a head- scratcher to the people of 1947 Britain. One of them was black, a colonial subject from the Bechuanaland Protectorate ( now Botswana). One was a crown prince.
Those two descriptions are of the same person, however. Seretse, played by David Oyelowo, was in line to become the next king of Bechuanaland when he went to London to study law. There, in 1947, he met Ruth (Rosamund Pike) at a dance. She was an office clerk; also, white. The furor that erupts when the two announce their intentions starts in Ruth’s living room (her father is livid) and spreads to the corridors of power in Britain, Bechuanaland and even South Africa, Bechuanaland’s southern neighbour, which was just getting rolling with something called Apartheid. A bi- racial royal family next door would be optics of the worst kind.
A United Kingdom was written by Guy Hibbert (Eye in the Sky) and directed by Anna Asante (Belle, another tale of mixed race). The filmmakers handle the politics nicely, showing how racism, tribalism and colonialism were sparked on both sides, and giving us Jack Davenport as a British diplomat, all handshakes and jollity as he trots out phrases like “against the political climate” and “diplomatic necessity.” His doublespeak comes down to the fact that Britain doesn’t want to antagonize South Africa, and won’t condone the marriage.
Neither will Seretse’s family, led by his uncle ( Vusi Kunene), who’s been running Bechuanaland while his nephew was getting an education. The old man warns that their people will never accept a white British queen; others suspect her of marrying above her station, in spite of the relative simplicity of the royal dwellings there.
Pike and Oyelowo have decent chemistry; at least, I’m going to assume they do, because the film soon decides it doesn’t have time for both romance and politics, and settles for the latter. This probably makes sense, since Seretse and Ruth were kept apart for a time by the machinations of the British government. But it does push the love story into the background, especially when a subplot about mineral rights muscles its way into the story.
The film remains a compelling history lesson — I’d never even heard of this royal romance before — and a timely tale of true love conquering petty hate.
But that’s a lot of worthy ground to cover in less than two hours. It feels like we’re getting the bullet- point version. ΩΩ½
A United Kingdom opens Feb. 24 in Toronto and Vancouver, and March 3 in Calgary and Edmonton.