David Michôd's The King moves like it's got the weight of the world on its shoulders, and in a way it does.
Adapted from William Shakespeare's "Henriad," which was adapted from actual history, the film chronicles the early reign of King Henry V (Timothée Chalamet), during which he faces betrayal in his court, death on the battlefield, and taunting on an international stage. His every choice reverberates around the globe and through the ages, but making the right ones is easier said than done when one has inherited an exhausted country from an irrational ruler (Ben Mendelsohn as Henry IV).
No wonder he spends so much of the movie with a silent frown fixed on his face; no wonder that even when he grins, it comes out like a grimace, as if from lack of practice. Everything must feel heavy to a man like that, and that's not even accounting for the full set of armor bearing down on his back much of the time.
Like its hero, The King is so concerned with its own importance that it becomes a total drag.
But if Henry's constant gloom is understandable, the film's decision to adopt the same attitude across the board is less so. Like its hero, The King is so concerned with its own importance that it becomes a total drag.
It's not Chalamet's fault, really. With his willowy build and chiseled features, the 23-year-old actor looks exactly right for a Henry still growing into his role — vulnerable enough to awaken our protective instincts, formidable enough to demand our respect. And he telegraphs Henry's misery beautifully, as will come as no surprise to fans of his from Call Me By Your Name or Lady Bird or Beautiful Boy. But The King has no place for the warmth and humor that were key to Chalamet's other roles, and they're sorely missed.
There's only so much even Chalamet can do with the single note he's asked to play over and over for 140 minutes, especially when almost every character around him is reflecting that same dourness back at him. This is a version of the story in which even Falstaff (played by Egerton, who also co-wrote The King with Michôd), one of Shakespeare's most beloved comic creations, has been reimagined as a taciturn military strategist.
This extreme seriousness defines every single aspect of The King, from the pacing (deliberate) to the color palette (muted). Characters gaze upon the austere beauty of the European countryside for long moments before opening their mouths to deliver lines loaded with metaphor, or they brood in corners because their emotions are too powerful to be expressed in mere words.
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This doom and gloom might feel justified if The King had anything unusually significant to say about war or leadership or familial legacy. But the lessons it imparts so gravely have been delivered a million times before, in everything from Dunkirk to Game of Thrones. What it has to say about its character can be summed up in a single line by Shakespeare: "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." (Which was actually about Henry IV, but still.)
Presumably, the tone is meant to remind us how very serious this all is. Instead, it has the cumulative effect of dulling any emotional reaction The King might have otherwise provoked. Why regret that Henry seems so rarely able to feel joy, when it's not clear that joy even exists in this universe to begin with? What is there to look forward to at the end of any of this, when all that stretches before us is endless tedium?
Worse hair, way better energy.
Image: Netflix
Thank God, at least, for Robert Pattinson. He saunters in midway through as the Dauphin of France, sporting an insolent smirk and spitting florid insults in a French accent so thick it borders on the comical. He feels jarringly out of place in The King, as if lifted in from another, much more entertaining movie — and while he's onscreen, The King stirs awake.
Where Henry carries himself like a man weighed down by worry, the Dauphin practically floats across the screen on a cloud of amusement. Where Henry is tormented by the brutality of battle, the Dauphin seems positively tickled by it. In theory, he's the bad guy, representing everything our noble hero is not: He's petty, frivolous, and vain. But because he's also the only person in The King who ever looks alive, and its only respite from abject misery, he emerges as the most likable character of the bunch.
It's a lesson The King would do well to take to heart — that sometimes, a bit of energy and unpredictability can accomplish what all the worry in the world cannot. But while Henry eventually figures out the upside of ditching some (literal, physical) weight, the movie never does. The King is so laden with the trappings of profundity and prestige that in the end, it smothers itself to death.
