Aubrey MaloneA United Kingdom (12A)
If this were a novel, one could be forgiven for saying, ‘too far-fetched.’ But it happened. In 1947, Prince Seretse Khama, heir apparent to the throne of Botswana, fell in love with cockney office clerk Ruth Williams while on a study period in London. They married shortly afterwards.
The ebony/ivory liaison was guaranteed to cause grief not only to South Africa – it had just introduced apartheid – but also to the British government, whose colonial regime was teetering. South Africa threatened to deny Britain access to its uranium and gold deposits unless the union was dissolved. Both families also disapproved.
When Khama brought Ruth back to Botswana they met with hostility on all fronts but the love between them was so strong they withstood all the pitfalls that were put in their way, both from Khama’s stubborn uncle and the intransigent Brits, personified here by an oleaginous civil servant called Alastair Channing. (Winston Churchill even became involved in the fall-out, overseeing Khama’s exile from his native land as Ruth struggled with a difficult pregnancy.)
It’s a heartwarming tale of the unflinching devotion of a couple to one another as their marriage makes tensions boil over on two continents. “No blacks, no Irish, no dogs,” Ruth reflects ruefully to her husband at one point, “but I didn’t expect it in your own country.”
This is the central irony. Just as Khama suffers racism in England, so does Ruth in Botswana. Her determination and warmth eventually secures her a foothold in the local community but only after much heartache. In the end it’s the story of the democratisation of a country, Khama’s visionary sense prevailing over the ingrained taboos of an imperialist tradition.
As Ruth, the wide-eyed Rosamund Pike carries a look of near-permanent expectation. After the venality of Gone Girl, this very versatile actress wastes no time at all in re-adjusting to the more pristine demands of a ‘retro’ role. For David Oyelowo, playing Khama, it’s another Selma-type turn. (He was Martin Luther King there.) Amma Asante, the director, is on familiar ground too, having already given us Belle, another ‘issue’ film.
If A United Kingdom has a fault it’s that it’s too deliberate in its progress from the apparently insurmountable familial and political problems of the first two-thirds of the film to an over-neat resolution of familial and wider prejudices by the end. To this extent it doesn’t hold any major surprises: one senses the couple will win through from the outset. But its solid production values and adept sense of time and place impress.
As Channing, Jack Davenport succeeds in making us hate him but his cheesy undoing at the hands of the lately-empowered Khama/Williams conjoining of forces only slightly transcends soap opera. Ms Asante would do well to steer clear of these sentimental dramas in the future, worthy and all as they are, and become embroiled in something where the contours of virtue and vice aren’t so obviously tabulated.
Good ***