A United Kingdom

I love it when a story is told that many of us haven't heard of or known much about.

Although possibly oversimplified due to the necessity of keeping the movie within a normal viewing time, nonetheless, it's a very good story about an amazing piece of history.

Well acted, well directed and beautifully filmed, this is a film I'm very happy to have seen. It's an inspirational look at enduring love and intelligence, at people power and a nation's faith in their leader, as well as credibly showing yet again how the British Empire and their bevy of crooked prime ministers deem to destroy nations for greed and profit, and to boot, having the gall to treat anyone but themselves as underdogs.

An excellent film for what it is and I would recommend it.

This is an outstanding film about a story I knew nothing about. However, my review is more a review of IMDb and its voting system.

I note that this film has, at the time of writing twenty-two 1 star reviews. Maybe these are genuine but I suspect they are not. For one thing the film has not had many screenings so have as many as twenty-two different people really hated it that much?

Secondly, 1 star films do not get selected for the Toronto Film Festival or for the opening night film for the London Film Festival. The programmers and selectors of these highly regarded festivals are at the top of their game and each year they are offered several thousand films. None of them are going to risk their hard fought reputations on selecting a bad 1-star film.

My feeling is that these 22 people are members of the KKK who hate black people or else they are people who are jealous of the those involved in the production.

Either way IMDb needs to have an algorithm that can deduce whether these people are genuine, or not. Maybe they are and the press reviews so far, which rave about the film, are wrong, but maybe these people are racist bitter bigots who hate the success of others because they themselves are failures and they have nothing better to do in their small sad lives but set up false IMDb accounts and vent their spleen in the only way they can.

Time as they say will tell.

I lived in Botswana for twenty-five odd years and enjoyed every single moment of it, almost certainly due in large measure to Seretse's enlightened politics and the genuine and natural warmth of the Botswana people. I knew both main characters quite well. Seretse was a very approachable man, even as president, and it was a pleasure to spend some time in his company. He was a man well loved by everyone, black and white. In fact, in Botswana one scarcely thought in those terms. As a politician he had huge charisma and was a great orator. He was also a born leader. I remember well being told by insiders that government Ministers who were in trouble for minor abuse of office or the like, would tremble in fear outside his office when they were to be 'carpeted'.

Ruth was an extraordinarily capable woman and even in her later years had more stamina than almost anyone I have known. She was at work in her office in Gaborone from early morning to the end of the day, patron of the Red Cross, Botswana Council of Women etc etc. Contrary, however, to one reviewer's criticism, Rosalind Pike's portrayal was quite accurate. She was not a strident campaigner but a very effective mover who enjoyed a social life and had many friends. In her widowhood she received constant visits from senior members of the tribe and government and was widely loved and respected by her people. She was most certainly "Mohumagadi" - Mother of the Nation.

This film portrays their personalities pretty accurately and the characterisation of the actors is extraordinarily true to life. Both David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike were absolutely convincing. The quality of the acting very quickly overcame my initial niggling concern that the physical likenesses were not quite there. The photography of Botswana was outstanding and the familiar views of Serowe from the Palapye 'road' and the scenes in the kgotla were quite emotional for me; I unexpectedly found I had a lump in my throat.

I can understand that, for others, the film may not have the immediacy it has for me, perhaps, but previous criticisms of 'cold' and 'unemotional' - No! Leaving aside my personal interest, it deserved to be the opener for the London Film Festival. Maybe not a total "blockbuster" but an unusual and great film nonetheless. Very close to fact.

"A United Kingdom" is based on the true-life relationship between Sir Seretse Khama, an African chieftain from what was then the Bechuanaland Protectorate, and a white British woman, Ruth Williams. The film implies that he was the King of Bechuanaland, but in fact no single individual ever held this position; Khama was the ruler of the Bangwatho, one of a number of tribes making up the Tswana nation, the largest ethnic group in the country. In Botswana, as Bechuanaland is now known, Khama and Ruth are today revered figures, as he was the leader of the country's independence movement and its first President when independence was achieved in 1966; unlike most other former colonies in Africa Botswana has remained a democracy ever since, and their son is the current President.

Khama's marriage to Ruth Williams (they met while he was studying in London in 1948) was highly controversial at the time. Many of Khama's own people, led by his uncle, refused to accept Ruth as their Queen. The South African government, which was just starting to introduce its policy of apartheid, objected furiously to the idea of a high-profile black leader in a neighbouring country marrying a white woman. Clement Attlee's Labour government, anxious to placate the South Africans who were threatening to leave the Commonwealth, intervened, exiling Khama from Bechuanaland and forbidding him to return. Winston Churchill, at the time leader of the Opposition, initially made sympathetic noises, but after the Conservatives were returned to power in 1951 he took an even harder line than Attlee. The situation was complicated by the discovery of diamonds in the territory; the British government, using the rift between Khama and his uncle as a pretext, threatened to revoke Bechuanaland's status as a Protectorate and declare it a Crown Colony. (The real reason was that in a Protectorate mineral rights belonged to the local people, whereas in a colony they belonged to the colonial power). One of Khama's few British allies was the Labour MP Tony Benn.

The action switches between an austere, drab post-war Britain and a bright sunlit Africa. The recreation of historical detail is well done and both the leading actors, David Oyelowo as Khama and Rosamund Pike as Ruth, are excellent. The film is an interesting look at a historical romance which made the headlines at the time but which today is largely forgotten, at least in Britain. 7/10

Some goofs. We hear a radio broadcast on the eve of Indian independence in 1947 telling us that Indians would go to bed "subjects of the Queen". Britain still had a King, George VI, in 1947. We are told that Queen Victoria made Bechuanaland a Protectorate to protect its people from "racist South Africa", but the Protectorate was created in 1885, twenty-five years before South Africa came into existence as a single nation. (In 1885 it was still a patchwork of British colonies and Boer republics). Prime Minister Attlee claims that the Presidents of South Africa, South-West Africa and the two Rhodesias were all opposed to Khama's marriage to Ruth. During Attlee's term of office (1945-51) none of these territories had a President.

The English film A United Kingdom (2016) was directed by Amma Asante. It's an interesting love story, based on real events. David Oyelowo plays Prince Seretse Khama, a young African man studying law in London. Rosamund Pike plays Ruth Williams, an intelligent, fun-loving civil servant. They fall in love, and we know that their marriage will be a difficult one, because of prejudice both in England and in Africa.

What we don't know is that their marriage has implications far beyond each of them. In 1947, South Africa was gearing up for its apartheid program. Bechuanaland was a British protectorate, and Seretse Khama was its rightful prince. However, South Africa borders Bechuanaland, and the South African government refused to tolerate a mixed race couple in a neighboring protectorate.

That meant that not only did Seretse and Ruth face prejudice from the people around them, but they were pawns in an international standoff in which Great Britain was willing to sacrifice them to appease South Africa. What happened next became the plot of the movie.

David Oyelowo is a superb actor. So is Rosamund Pike. Ms. Pike has 42 movie credits, but I believe the only other film in which I saw her was Pride and Prejudice (2005), in which she portrayed Jane Bennet. I reviewed that movie for IMDb, and wrote that her performance was "luminous."

Director Asante is skillful, and the acting and cinematography are wonderful. We saw the movie at the excellent Little Theatre in Rochester, NY. It won't work quite as well on the small screen, because the film has some breathtaking scenes of the African desert.

For some reason A United Kingdom has a dismal IMDb rating of 6.7. I don't understand this--it's much better than that. Find it and judge for yourself.