No Majesty, No Chivalry

Rating: 7/10 (21 October 2019)

It is totally opposite to its predecessors, the Olivier and Branagh versions of Shakespeare's Henry V. In The King, there is no majesty or nobility, neither in kingship nor in war. Collaborators Joel Edgerton and David Michod give their film strong anti-war and anti-monarchy sentiments, re-imagining the literary tradition in an unflattering way.
The pace is slow and the decor stark, drained of colour and vitality, without any pretense to rousing historical spectacle. Most of what occurs seems little more than drudgery -- the drudgery of office, of diplomacy, of battle. Even in speech, long pauses between lines make it seem that even to articulate a thought requires effort, and talk is a kind of drudgery in itself.
The odd, deliberate miscasting of Timothee Chalamet gives the soldier-king a
rather startling effect. He isn't given many dramatic high points, but we still keep watching Timothee's pallid Henry in his various predicaments. He is enigmatic, even compelling sometimes, a misplaced boy-king stumbling through history.
The King has a cold, Nordic look, maybe like a Carl Dreyer film. We expect Falstaff (Joel Edgerton) to enliven the general spirit, but the famous buffoon here is merely a dry advisor to the king. Any lightening of mood comes from Robert Pattinson as a clumsy, loony Dauphin of France, and Lily-Rose Depp as the insightful and superior Princess Catharine.
The Battle of Agincourt itself is a superb mud-bowl, with armoured knights clashing blindly at one another, filmed in sharp lines and grey tones like a medieval etching.
In its own fashion, The King is engrossing, maybe even once in a while a bit exciting. If the film's intent is to depict a cheerless, unheroic age, it does so well enough. As a dark meditation on royalty and militarism the film more or less succeeds on its own terms.