#guy hibbert

Πάμε σινεμά: United Kingdom

Ο γάμος μεταξύ του νεαρού πολιτικού Seretse Khama (David Oyelowo), από τη Botswana της Αφρικής και της Αγγλίδας, τραπεζικής υπαλλήλου, Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike), έμελλε το 1940, λίγο μάλιστα πριν την κορύφωση του “Μεγάλου Πολέμου“, να προκαλέσει, διχάζοντας ένα ολόκληρο έθνος και την κοινή γνώμη, γεννώντας ένα «κόλλημα» που θα έβρισκε τη λύση του 17 ολόκληρα χρόνια μετά. Η ειρωνεία είναι πως,…

Seretse’s story in “A United Kingdom”

[brid video=”113822″ player=”7163″ title=”A United Kingdom (Seretse) Featurette”]

  Prince Seretse Khama of Botswana causes an international stir when he marries a white woman from London in the late 1940s.

Dramatization of the real-life romance between white Londoner Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike) and African law student Seretse Khama (David Oyelowo), who began their love affair in 1947 when…

“A United Kingdom” Family – Featurette

[brid video=”113047″ player=”7163″ title=”A United Kingdom (Family) Featurette”]

  Dramatization of the real-life romance between white Londoner Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike) and African law student Seretse Khama (David Oyelowo), who began their love affair in 1947 when Williams was unaware that Khama was the heir apparent to the throne of the Bamangwato tribe of the British protectorate of…

(Amma Asante, 2016)

It's a criticism that can often be aimed at movies telling intimate stories against a larger historical backdrop that the enormity of wider events gets overshadowed by the central, individual, 'smaller' story on which the film chooses to centre its attention. I think it is very much to the credit of writer Guy Hibbert, and particularly director Amma Asante that in this her third feature she has for me at least managed to sidestep that issue.

I guess that is made somewhat easier by the fact that the story she's choosing to focus on, chronicling the relationship between English clerk Ruth Williams, and Botswana’s king in waiting, Seretse Khama, is not a story set against a story of social upheaval, but is rather the root of, and reason for all the turmoil that lends the movie its weight.

Still, I think it's very much to Asante's credit that she here achieves a wonderful balance between properly fleshing out the two central characters, their personalities, and relationship (thanks in very large part to the fact that she's cast performers as strong as David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike as much as anything the screenplay is doing) while also managing to fairly comprehensively encompass the scale and seriousness of what is going on around them.

It's the sort of story so vivid, huge, and sort of scary that it defies belief it isn't better known than it is, or that no movie has been made of it to date. Asante's take is hugely watchable, an entertaining, swiftly moving rollercoaster of emotions that is never weighed down by the inarguable heft of proceedings, but never feels like it's treating them lightly. It can't be an easy trick to get right, but get it right she does.

Review: A United Kingdom

Asante delivers another winning slice of history. A United Kingdom’s magnificent romance derives power from the unlikeliness of its true story.

A romantic fairy tale with love overcoming cruelty, Amma Asante’s A United Kingdom is all the more wonderful because it is, incredibly, a true story. It’s also, in my humble opinion, far more rewarding than its underwhelming Boxing Day stable mate La La…

A UNITED KINGDOM (12A)

A UNITED KINGDOM (12A)

Run time: 111mins

Director: Amma Asante

Cast: David Oyelowo, Rosamund Pike, Jack Davenport, Nicholas Lyndhurst, Tom Felton, Jack Lowden

Synopsis: A UNITED KINGDOM tells the inspiring true story of Seretse Khama, the king of Bechuanaland (modern Botswana), and Ruth Williams, the London office worker that he married in 1948 in the face of fierce opposition from their families…