'The Lost King': a contemporary fairy tale with the body of Richard III found in a parking lot

2023-05-05T10:48:47.281Z

With good judgment, the old fox that is Stephen Frears, with his power as a narrator of a true movie classic, has viewed the film without a drop of fanfare or brilliance.

Lots of movies seem to be cooked with the ingredients of fairy tales: magical apparitions;

heart palpitations;

the triumph of constancy over adversity;

overcoming social and political barriers through truth, naturalness and authenticity;

the greatness of the nobility and dignity in the face of careerism;

the presence of a fairy who guides the path to glory.

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End of the hunt for the skeleton of Richard III

What is no longer so common is that real stories have such characteristics.

And the one that surrounds

The Lost King,

Pure truth revealed just the day before yesterday, it is a beautiful fairy tale that took place a few years ago, in 2013, in the ugly British city of Leicester, around an even more horrendous municipal car park.

There, removed from English pomp and circumstance, lay the body of the mythical King Richard III.

A discovery guided by a woman of the lot that nobody paid attention to for a while, self-taught in History, with no more academic training than her reading and her intuition, who protected by "a hunch" seemed to have been led there by the very same spirit of the monarch, immortalized by William Shakespeare's play, and turned into the archetype of the political and criminal conspirator: physically deformed, capable of anything to achieve and maintain his power.

With all this, and with all the essentials exposed in the first paragraph of this critical text, the actor and writer Steve Coogan —together with Jeff Pope— has composed a script based on those true events that has a lot to do with a contemporary fable, an Arthurian legend. with a nobody pulling the sword from the stone to the astonishment of the powerful;

of Cinderella massacred by a society of experts, bureaucrats, interested and profiteers, who have no choice but to give in to the brilliance of an enlightened woman.

With good judgment, the old fox that is Stephen Frears, who has made movies for more than 50 years, with masterpieces, daring, singularities, minor, major, and part-time films, but always with the power as a narrator of a true movie classic, has visualized

The lost king

without a drop of fanfare or brilliance.

A film at street level, set in everyday interiors -office meetings, pub conversations, breakfasts at home-, which actually hides an extraordinary story about illusion, impetus and shock.

An unusual page in the recent history of the United Kingdom in which, of course, Richard III himself also makes an appearance to guide the heroine and to defend himself against Shakespearean injustice and talent: neither ugly nor hunchbacked nor criminal.

Frears, who began his career illustrating for television the wonderful stories of writers Alan Bennett and Tom Stoppard, with a phase of social and cultural radicalism

(My Beautiful Laundromat, Sammy and Rosie Get It On, Open Your Ears),

several periods of luxury with formidable titles

(Dangerous Liaisons, The Scammers, High Fidelity, The Queen…),

and without ever forgetting its social roots

(The Van, Irish Coffee, Liam…),

He has directed a seemingly simple film told with the conviction of great storytellers.

A sociopolitical drama with university overtones, in which the magical conversations between King Richard and the glorious and discreet Philippa Langley, played by Sally Hawkins with that strength of hers, disguised as weakness and hesitation, have a lot of Woody Allen comedy, of palpable daily life with the style of

Seducer's Dreams.

Without any fuss of visual fantasy.

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Faced with disbelief, university corporatism and power struggles, a sick and neglected woman was convinced that she could extract the sword Excalibur from the rock.

Little of her believed her.

And there, in a ghastly parking lot, lay the myth: a monarch in need of historical rehabilitation.