Unthinkable to see a new film about old English royalty, power games, and British territorial skirmishes in November 2019, without scanning it every minute for Brexit metaphors. However, it takes almost two hours to find something in "The King" by David Michôd.
Here comes the English King Henry V in 1420 in the city of Troyes. He enters the audience hall of Charles VI with his entourage. from France, and we see this Karl lying on his bench diagonally. Exactly like Jacob Rees-Mogg, the famous bad man of the British House of Commons, who is tired of debates. Coincidence? Or a comment on the omnipotence of the British? The door to the meta-level of "The King," the new Shakespearean film that can be seen on Netflix?
No, no and no. Apart from the fact that on closer inspection, none of the interpretations makes a reasonably solid sense: When Jacob Rees-Mogg yawned on the parliament bank on September 3, the premiere of "The King" in Venice was already a day over. Quite apart from that, but only marginally, the Brexit tale does not even have the dramaturgical potential of Shakespeare's dramas. Your characters are just not tragic enough. You have too little fall height, maintain too much flat calculus.
Alibi theatrical release for the Oscar qualification
Unfortunately, something similar happened to Australian director David Michôd ("Animal Kingdom", "The Rover") with "The King". On three plays - part one and two of "Henry IV." as well as "Heinrich V." - he has scraped and pressed until the remains fit into a single, nearly two-and-a-half-hour movie. In other words, "The King" has become a pretty tough rind. And the Worcester sauce is not enough for everyone.
What it's about: The King's son Henry (name of the synchronization translated exemplary in German) follows in the early 15th century reluctantly his father to the throne. He has to give up the funny drunkenness, dive into political life. Is then also urged by his advisers to a war against France, which he considers superfluous and disgusting.
photo gallery
4 pictures
"The King": Deep in the Historian Drama Tunnel"The King" was produced by Brad Pitts company Plan B and Netflix, in the same alliance as Michôds predecessor project "War Machine". The new film, however, looks as if it had been brushed even more intense for the award season steel brushed. A short alibi theatrical release in the US was mainly used for the Oscar qualification (in contrast to Spain, Ireland or Japan, the film was not in the cinema in Germany), the theme and the gravitas of "The King" are accordingly. Nominations for Heinrich-Rolle were made in 1946 for Lawrence Olivier and in 1989 for Kenneth Branagh, the dreaded Shakespeare popular enlightener of the eighties and nineties.
Now, Timothée Chalamet wears the sacred chain mail, skinny-fit look, and with that glorious blend of bottomless denial and Couldn't-care-less bitchiness that has made him the star of the moment. For the Oscar he was already nominated in 2018 with "Call Me By Your Name", he does not need Shakespeare.
But here he is, unfortunately, in there, in the long history drama tunnel full of desaturated colors and flickering sparks, guttural dialogues, staring clerics and dying kings who start some sentence at the last moment, which of course they can not finish. Especially in the first half of "The King" there are moments when hopes Anthony Hopkins might come in and fire off an overzealous King James English monologue. And that's what you rarely wish for otherwise.
Pattinson's "Knight of the Coconut" accent
The problem is not just the stale imagery. To ensure that all the characters fit into the tightly drawn plot, director Michôd has assembled many of the well-differentiated and motivated Shakespeare characters into functional characters. And so it is due to a bizarre gimmick in the last film lesson, that "The King" is still in the gears, at least a bit.
Since Robert Pattinson has two appearances as an obscene French heir to the throne, with blond hairdresser hairdo and batty "Knight of the coconut" accent. "Your eggs must be huge," he annoys the Englishman, "huge eggs with a small tail!" The sentence is not from the template and slips just under the "free from 16" -Latte. But dramaturgically, he manages to do what no mermaid dialogue has managed to do before: he awakens the tired knight film from its deep sleep.
Maybe in 2019, many more "Game of Thrones" and much less Shakespeare will be needed to start a battle.
