THE LOST KING
****
Director: Stephen Frears
Screenplay: Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope, based on the book The King’s Grave: The Search for Richard III by Philippa Langley.
Principal cast:
Sally Hawkins
Steve Coogan
Harry Lloyd
Mark Addy
Lee Ingleby
James Fleet
Country: UK
Classification: M
Runtime: 108 mins.
Australian release date: 26 December 2022.
There are two stimulating stories travelling in tandem in veteran director Stephen Frears’ latest film, The Lost King. One is a fascinating account of the search for the body of the Plantagenet King Richard III, found beneath a carpark in Leicester in 2012, while the other tells a much darker tale of how the female responsible for the search had her achievement undermined and her role diminished by the men involved. In a way, that part of the movie covers a story even older than Richard himself (he reigned in the 15th century) - it has ever been thus, women’s ideas being played down by men before being co-opted by them. When the woman’s husband asks her, “What would improve things at work?”, she drolly answers, “A penis.” Say no more.
Forty-five-year-old Edinburgh resident Philippa Langley (the ever-reliable Sally Hawkins) is separated from her husband John (Steve Coogan) but still on friendly terms with him, and they have two kids, Max (Adam Robb) and Raife (Benjamin Scanlan), who reside with her in the family home. John lives in a flat but maintaining two households requires that both he and Philippa must work full-time so, when she is passed over for a promotion, he reminds her that she isn’t in a position to quit her job. That night she takes Max to see Shakespeare’s Richard III and becomes annoyed by the playwright’s depiction of the king, which she regards as unjust. When she learns that the play was written over a hundred years after King Richard’s death, during the time of the Tudor kings, she sets out to do her own historical research and decides that the work is based on Tudor propaganda. As she gets more and more involved with the king’s story, an apparition of him (Harry Lloyd) appears to her and she takes it as a sign that he wants his lost corpse to be unearthed and given a proper burial. Her resulting investigations lead her to Leicester, where she convinces University of Leicester archaeologist Richard Buckley (Mark Addy) and sceptical Director of Corporate Affairs, Richard Taylor (Lee Ingleby), to support her search but when Philippa’s dogged sleuthing bears fruit, the men endeavour to leave her work out of the story and claim her success as their own.
Coogan and his co-writer Jeff Pope have collaborated before, on Frears’ Philomena (again, as co-writers) and Jon S. Baird’s Stan and Ollie (which Pope wrote and Coogan performed in). Their screenplay for Philomena was excellent and they’ve gone close to hitting the same heights with this one in the way they’ve effectively combined a serious subject with just the right amount of levity. Describing how the pair work together, Frears says, “Steve is a witty writer, a delicate writer, and Jeff is a very good dramatist. So, between the two of them, they do everything. They write in this fresh way that nobody else does, they tell a story in a very original, arresting way.”
Hawkins is superb in The Lost King, embodying the real-life Philippa Langley, who suffers from ME (chronic fatigue syndrome) and has battled negative opinions about her abilities and scepticism about her illness for many years. It’s a condition that most people don’t understand; two of its main components are total exhaustion and a lot of muscular pain, so Hawkins’ portrayal was important to Langley. Despite it all, Hawkins says that, “Despite her illness, she's never been sorry for herself,” and that comes through in the film. In fact, it suggests that Langley’s ME might have contributed to her identification with Richard because his reputation, too, suffered as a result of being misunderstood. She knew what it was to be misrepresented and suspected that there might be something more to Richard the hunchbacked murderer of the twins in the tower - a leader, a thinker, a man who was not remembered in the right way. The Lost King is a multi-faceted tale that covers ill treatment across the ages. Coogan states that, “It’s not just about a person, it’s about a woman in a strongly patriarchal society, who asserts herself and takes control of her life. I thought it would resonate with a lot of women who feel a bit invisible at a certain point in their lives. It’s a conversation about sexual politics, as much as anything.”
Screenplay: Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope, based on the book The King’s Grave: The Search for Richard III by Philippa Langley.
Principal cast:
Sally Hawkins
Steve Coogan
Harry Lloyd
Mark Addy
Lee Ingleby
James Fleet
Country: UK
Classification: M
Runtime: 108 mins.
Australian release date: 26 December 2022.
There are two stimulating stories travelling in tandem in veteran director Stephen Frears’ latest film, The Lost King. One is a fascinating account of the search for the body of the Plantagenet King Richard III, found beneath a carpark in Leicester in 2012, while the other tells a much darker tale of how the female responsible for the search had her achievement undermined and her role diminished by the men involved. In a way, that part of the movie covers a story even older than Richard himself (he reigned in the 15th century) - it has ever been thus, women’s ideas being played down by men before being co-opted by them. When the woman’s husband asks her, “What would improve things at work?”, she drolly answers, “A penis.” Say no more.
Forty-five-year-old Edinburgh resident Philippa Langley (the ever-reliable Sally Hawkins) is separated from her husband John (Steve Coogan) but still on friendly terms with him, and they have two kids, Max (Adam Robb) and Raife (Benjamin Scanlan), who reside with her in the family home. John lives in a flat but maintaining two households requires that both he and Philippa must work full-time so, when she is passed over for a promotion, he reminds her that she isn’t in a position to quit her job. That night she takes Max to see Shakespeare’s Richard III and becomes annoyed by the playwright’s depiction of the king, which she regards as unjust. When she learns that the play was written over a hundred years after King Richard’s death, during the time of the Tudor kings, she sets out to do her own historical research and decides that the work is based on Tudor propaganda. As she gets more and more involved with the king’s story, an apparition of him (Harry Lloyd) appears to her and she takes it as a sign that he wants his lost corpse to be unearthed and given a proper burial. Her resulting investigations lead her to Leicester, where she convinces University of Leicester archaeologist Richard Buckley (Mark Addy) and sceptical Director of Corporate Affairs, Richard Taylor (Lee Ingleby), to support her search but when Philippa’s dogged sleuthing bears fruit, the men endeavour to leave her work out of the story and claim her success as their own.
Coogan and his co-writer Jeff Pope have collaborated before, on Frears’ Philomena (again, as co-writers) and Jon S. Baird’s Stan and Ollie (which Pope wrote and Coogan performed in). Their screenplay for Philomena was excellent and they’ve gone close to hitting the same heights with this one in the way they’ve effectively combined a serious subject with just the right amount of levity. Describing how the pair work together, Frears says, “Steve is a witty writer, a delicate writer, and Jeff is a very good dramatist. So, between the two of them, they do everything. They write in this fresh way that nobody else does, they tell a story in a very original, arresting way.”
Hawkins is superb in The Lost King, embodying the real-life Philippa Langley, who suffers from ME (chronic fatigue syndrome) and has battled negative opinions about her abilities and scepticism about her illness for many years. It’s a condition that most people don’t understand; two of its main components are total exhaustion and a lot of muscular pain, so Hawkins’ portrayal was important to Langley. Despite it all, Hawkins says that, “Despite her illness, she's never been sorry for herself,” and that comes through in the film. In fact, it suggests that Langley’s ME might have contributed to her identification with Richard because his reputation, too, suffered as a result of being misunderstood. She knew what it was to be misrepresented and suspected that there might be something more to Richard the hunchbacked murderer of the twins in the tower - a leader, a thinker, a man who was not remembered in the right way. The Lost King is a multi-faceted tale that covers ill treatment across the ages. Coogan states that, “It’s not just about a person, it’s about a woman in a strongly patriarchal society, who asserts herself and takes control of her life. I thought it would resonate with a lot of women who feel a bit invisible at a certain point in their lives. It’s a conversation about sexual politics, as much as anything.”