The Duke
Roger Michell, UK, 2020o
The first successful burglary in the history of London's National Gallery was committed in 1961 by a retired cab driver from the northern English working class. He climbed through a toilet window and stole a Goya portrait of the Duke of Wellington. His motive: the government should exempt pensioners and the destitute from paying television license fees. Roger Mitchell's comedy tells the story of the ludicrous blackmail.
Kempton Bunton lives in precarious circumstances and is a good-natured chap in his late fifties with a (rigid) sense of social justice. This sense is so strong that it regularly drives his wife up the wall and occasionally lands him in jail. His most important hobbyhorse is a British no-billag campaign: Bunton thinks it is unfair that pensioners and poor people have to pay fees to the state-run BBC for TV reception. When he also learns in the early 1960s that the government is using taxpayers' money to buy a painting by Goya depicting the Duke of Wellington, his patience finally snaps and events come thick and fast. As in many of the best British comedies, the hilarious is mixed with class warfare, and the acting duo of Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren are simply a delight as the warmly bickering old couple. And just as in the case of The Lost King, it is hard to believe that almost everything here is based on fact: In 1961, the story filled the press columns for weeks and there is even an allusion to it in the Bond film Dr. No.
Till BrockmannPorté par une belle énergie, des dialogues savoureux d’humour anglais (la scène du procès, hilarante, a des allures de one man show) de super acteurs, ce film, le dernier de Roger Michell, se savoure comme un bon muffin à l’heure du thé.
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