“Some half-baked portrait by a Spanish drunk” Kempton Bunton (Jim Broadbent)
The Duke, a British comedy in the 60’s Ealing-Studios tradition, but historically accurate, is about both the famous National Gallery Goya portrait of The Duke of Wellington and the heroic Newcastle cabbie, Kempton, who stole it to get funds to subsidize old age pensioners for TV licenses. (Kempton himself had done time for not having a license.)
The Duke takes us into his modest home, where he stashes the Goya
in the closet of his tatty bedroom until it’s discovered and he goes to trial for theft. It’s here that the wannabe playwright cabbie (see the opening quote) wins public sympathy for such comments as
“I'd just finished reading Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness and I felt a need to explore Sunderland.” When he prefers Chekov over Shakespeare, who depicts too many kings for Kempton’s taste, he is truly a man of the people.
Yet mostly his ardor is played for the poor because he puts his faith “not in God but in people,” connecting him with the Labour party’s “for the many, not the few.” The trial is a hoot of a class contrast with snooty lords and barristers laid waste by his natural wit.
Not charmed, however, is his wife, underplayed to perfection by Helen Mirren. Her support is to serve him ginger snaps and tea and watch his back while they makeup dancing to Gracie Fields’ “A Nice Cup of Tea.” The film cares little about anachronisms as long as the spirit of the workingman’s rage is carried over the decades with modern attitude and Mirren can tut-tut to cut through their British stiff-upper lip distance from each other.
The class structure is solidly in place while Mirren cleans toilets and he rails against inequality with a spirit that promises equality in some decade to come. Meanwhile, everyone in the courtroom can sing “Jerusalem” as if justice were almost here.
The Duke is a delight in a local theater with a cup of tea and thee.
The Duke
Director: Roger Michell (Notting Hill)
Screenplay: Richard Bean, Clive Coleman (Spitting Image)
Cast: Jim Broadbent (The Crying Game), Helen Mirren (The Queen)
Run Time: 1h 35m
Rating: R
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts NPR’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double Take out of WCBE 90.5 FM. Contact him at JohnDeSando52@gmail.com
