The King (2019 film)

The King is a 2019 epic historical drama film directed by David Michôd, based on several plays from William Shakespeare's Henriad. The screenplay was written by Michôd and Joel Edgerton, who both produced the film with Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, and Liz Watts. The King includes an ensemble cast led by Timothée Chalamet as the Prince of Wales and later King Henry V of England, alongside Edgerton, Sean Harris, Lily-Rose Depp, Robert Pattinson, and Ben Mendelsohn.
The film focuses on the rise of Henry V as king after his father dies as he also must navigate palace politics, the war his father left behind, and the emotional strings of his past life. The King premiered at the 76th Venice International Film Festival on 2 September 2019, and was released digitally via Netflix on 11 October 2019. The film received favourable reviews from film critics but, despite being openly presented as an adaptation of Shakespeare's Henriad adaptation rather than as a historical documentary film, it was criticised by historians for its inaccuracy to both the original plays and historical reality.
King Henry IV of England has several sons, including the eldest, Henry, Prince of Wales ("Hal"), and Thomas. Hal, uninterested in succeeding his father, spends his days drinking, whoring, and jesting with his companion Falstaff in Eastcheap.
King Henry IV grows tired of Hal's debauchery and announces that Thomas will inherit the throne. King Henry IV sends Thomas to subdue Hotspur's rebellion. However, Hal arrives and upstages Thomas by challenging Hotspur to single combat. Hal kills Hotspur, ending the battle without further conflict.
Thomas, feeling cheated of his glory, complains to King Henry IV. Thomas dies shortly after while campaigning against the rebels in Wales. King Henry IV dies in his bed with Hal present. Hal is anointed as King Henry V and opts for peace and conciliation with his father's many adversaries, despite his actions being seen as weakness.
At King Henry V's coronation feast, envoys from the Dauphin of France present Hal with a tennis ball as an insulting coronation gift. However, King Henry V frames this as a positive reflection of his boyhood. His sister Philippa, now the Queen of Denmark, cautions her brother that nobles in any royal court have their own interests in mind and will never fully reveal their true intentions.
King Henry V interrogates a captured assassin who claims to have been sent to kill him by King Charles VI of France. French agents approach the English nobles Cambridge and Grey. The traitors plot against Hal and unsuccessfully attempt to win over the Chief Justice, Gascoigne. Gascoigne advises Hal that a show of strength is necessary to unite England, so Hal declares war on France and has Cambridge and Grey beheaded. He approaches Falstaff and appoints him as his chief military strategist, saying that Falstaff is the only man he truly trusts.
The English army sets sail for France. After completing the Siege of Harfleur, they receive taunting messages from the Dauphin. The English advance parties stumble upon a vast French army gathering to face them. Dorset advises Hal to retreat, but Falstaff proposes a false advance to induce the French into rushing forward into the muddy battlefield, where they will be weighed down by their heavy armour and horses. They will then be attacked by the English longbowmen and surrounded by a large, lightly armoured flanking force hidden in the nearby woods.
Unable to dissuade Falstaff from leading the advance, Hal challenges the Dauphin to single combat to minimize bloodshed. The Dauphin sees this as weakness and refuses, as the Battle of Agincourt begins. Falstaff's plan succeeds; the French army charges and gets stuck in the mud. Hal leads a flanking attack, and the outnumbered yet agile English army defeats the stalled French, although Falstaff is killed. The Dauphin, witnessing his men's retreat, restates Hal's challenge but slips in the mud until Hal orders his soldiers to kill him. Hal commands the execution of all French prisoners to prevent regrouping, despite Falstaff's warning against this unchivalrous act unworthy of a king.
Hal meets King Charles VI, who agrees to adopt him as his heir and offers him his daughter, Catherine of Valois. Hal returns to England with his new wife for a triumphant celebration. In private, she challenges his reasons for invading France and denies the alleged French actions against him, suggesting that the assassin was a plot from within his own court. Suspicious, Hal confronts Gascoigne, who admits that he staged the insult and acts of aggression, believing his sole duty is to protect the king, even if it requires deceiving him. In a cold fury, Hal kills the Chief Justice and returns to Catherine, asking her to promise to always speak the truth to him as clearly as possible.
In addition, Thibault de Montalembert has a cameo as France's King Charles VI.
In 2013, it was revealed that Joel Edgerton and David Michôd had collaborated on writing an adaptation of three plays in William Shakespeare's Henriad – Henry IV, Part 1; Henry IV, Part 2 and Henry V – for Warner Bros. Pictures. In September 2015, it was announced that Michôd would direct the project, with Warner Bros. producing and distributing the film, and Lava Bear producing.
In February 2018, Timothée Chalamet joined the cast, with Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, and Jeremy Kleiner producing, alongside Liz Watts, under their Plan B Entertainment banner. Ultimately, Netflix distributed the film instead of Warner Bros. In March 2018, Edgerton joined the cast of the film. In May 2018, Robert Pattinson, Ben Mendelsohn, Sean Harris, Lily-Rose Depp, Tom Glynn-Carney, and Thomasin McKenzie joined the cast; Dean-Charles Chapman joined in June.
Principal photography began on 1 June 2018 and wrapped on 24 August. Filming took place throughout England and at Szilvásvárad, Hungary. Many scenes were filmed on location at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire, England. Lincoln Cathedral was used in place of Westminster Abbey for the coronation scenes.
The film's original score was composed by Nicholas Britell, who thought of approaching the film's music from the 21st century, instead of the medieval 15th century approach, saying "because of the timelessness of these issues, if felt like something that we could explore with the sound of different time periods, just to make you look at the early 1400's in a way that it felt like you hadn't seen it before". He felt that the "1400s looks like it was a foreign planet". He experimented the film's music using bass clarinets run with tape filters, and sounds of metal while composing. It was Britell's most "dark and sombre" music reflecting the zone of the film. Lakeshore Records released the album consisting of 15 tracks from Britell's score, on 1 November 2019 in digital and CD formats, while the vinyl edition was released three years later on 8 July 2022.
The film had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on 2 September 2019. It screened at the BFI London Film Festival on 3 October 2019, and received a limited release on 11 October 2019 before being released on Netflix, for digital streaming, on 1 November 2019.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 71% of 146 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.6/10. The website's consensus reads: "While The King is sometimes less than the sum of its impressive parts, strong source material and gripping performances make this a period drama worth hailing. " Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 62 out of 100, based on 38 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.
While released on Netflix, The King did receive a limited theatrical release (43 screens total, for three weeks) in South Korea and New Zealand, grossing $126,931 at the box office.
Rather than a historical documentary film, The King is a 21st century adaptation, of William Shakespeare's 16th century Henriad fictionalised adaptations, of 15th century events; as The Independent opined, "as an adaptation of an adaptation, a few things are bound to have been lost in translation". After its release, The King became the subject of widespread commentary over its historical accuracy. The film, based on the Henriad, a collection of Shakespearean history plays about the monarchs of England, includes several fictional characters (such as John Falstaff) and contains several historical dramatisations of the real events the movie was based on.
Numerous articles were published on the historicity of The King, analysing the historical accuracy of various elements of the movie. The following historical inaccuracies were mentioned: