Clever clogs Steve Coogan comes up with another cracking yarn in THE LOST KING.
A more fitting title would have been Looking For Richard but that usurper, Al Pacino, had already plundered that moniker, and so Coogan and co-writer, Jeff Pope, opted for THE LOST KING and nevertheless found gold.
A decade ago, having been lost for over 500 years, the remains of King Richard III were discovered beneath a car park in Leicester. The search had been orchestrated by an amateur historian, Philippa Langley, whose unrelenting research had been met with incomprehension by her friends and family and with scepticism by experts and academics. Based on this extraordinary tale of tenaciousness, THE LOST KING is the life-affirming true story of a woman who refused to be ignored and who took on the country’s most eminent historians, forcing them to think again about one of the most controversial kings in England’s history.
For a film whose finale audiences know the outcome, the ingredients of witty script, superlative acting and concise direction must all come to the rise and that’s certainly the case with THE LOST KING.
The casting of Sally Hawkins as Philippa Langley is spot on and rounds off another year of highlights including The Phantom of the Open and Spencer. Her persistence and poise inhabits every frame of the film, and her discovery goes some way in dispelling the myth perpetuated by Shakespeare’s play, Richard III, that aside from not being a desirable earthly ruler, Richard made an ideal viceroy of hell.
In 2018, after a long campaign inspired by Philippa, the Royal Family’s website was amended to reinstate Richard as the rightful King of England 1483 – 1485, no longer a usurper.
In 2015 the Queen awarded Philippa an MBE in recognition of her services in the exhumation and identification of Richard III.
Directed by the fearless Stephen Frears, THE LOST KING is a fine festive find.
