Thursday, August 24, 2023

Issue:

Mackay and Whitsunday Life

Movie Reviews

There’s a unique British humour, and it’s emblemised in Roger Michell’s final film ‘The Duke’. Michell - who died last September - managed to see his film screened just a handful of times to audiences, happily to rave reviews.  

Now with its theatrical release, his swan song is still raking in those plaudits.

Actor Jim Broadbent stars in Michell’s adaptation of the true story of taxi driver Kempton Bunton, who ‘borrowed’ Francisco De Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington in 1961. It remains the only theft from the National Gallery, and it was done for all the right reasons. Sending ransom notes to the British Police, Kempton promised the portrait’s return on condition that the government invested more in care for the elderly.

Broadbent is a familiar face in British cinema, and his partnership with Hellen Mirren – who plays his loyal wife, Dorothy - in The Duke is the heart of the film. The duo are magnificent, lending the story dignity, whilst balancing it with humour and charm that manages to deftly avoid oversentimentality.

“You couldn’t invent such a ridiculous tale. If you presented it as fiction, you’d never get away with it,” Jim Broadbent said of the film in an interview with The Guardian.

It took 50 years for Kempton’s full story to emerge - and the only truth was that he was a good man, determined to change the world and save his marriage - how and why he used the Duke to achieve that makes for a wonderfully uplifting cinema experience that opens up like a flower. Its quirky, kind and absolutely true.

The Duke (M) is coming to the Bowen Summergarden Cinema on Saturday, May 28.

Jim Broadbent and Hellen Mirren in ‘The Duke’

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