"The Lost King": review

(L to R) Steve Coogan as John the ex-husband, Sally Hawkins as Philippa; Harry Lloyd as Richard III

2022's "The Lost King" is directed by Stephen Frears ("Dangerous Liaisons," "The Grifters," "The Queen," "Philomena"). The script was written by Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope. It stars Sally Hawkins, Steve Coogan, Harry Lloyd, Mark Addy, Lee Ingleby, and James Fleet. The story is based on the 2013 book The King's Grave: The Search for Richard III by Philippa Langley and Michael Jones, published barely a year after the 2012 discovery of the burial site of King Richard III, the last Plantagenet king of England. The Langley-Jones book obviously presents a partisan perspective that may have bled into the movie: much of the movie depicts Philippa Langley's struggle to unearth King Richard III after she had done massive research to determine his burial site's most probable location. As the movie relates things, Langley met with much resistance from the local Leicester University (pronounce it "Lester"), and she had to deal with skittish sponsors who were ready to drop her excavation project at the first sign of failure. Some critics have drawn parallels between this film and "The Dig."

Philippa Langley (Hawkins) is a mid-40s office worker in Edinburgh; she suffers from chronic-fatigue syndrome, more often called ME (for myalgic encephalomyelitis) in the UK. As a divorcee with two sons and a dead-end job, Philippa is in search of purpose. An amateur historian with an interest in King Richard III, Philippa ends up joining the Richard III Society (in real life, she founded a branch), whose members reject the standard narrative that Richard, as portrayed in Shakespeare and as described by other historical figures, was a cunning and power-hungry usurper who killed his own nephews on his way to illegitimately gaining the throne. Society members dismiss this view as a skein of Tudor lies. Philippa watches a performance of Shakespeare's Richard III one night and, despite disagreeing with Shakespeare's point of view, she is very taken with the actor playing King Richard. She gets it into her head to go on a search for where the king might plausibly be buried, which means examining and discarding some of the rumors surrounding Richard's death, such as that his body had been thrown into the River Soar. An apparition of Richard, who looks like the actor she'd seen in the Shakespeare performance (Lloyd), begins to haunt Philippa, and she strikes up an ongoing conversation with the ghost. 

While standing in a social-services parking lot one day—a possible location for the Greyfriars Priory and Richard's remains—Philippa gets the spooky intuition that Richard is buried right there, under the asphalt. She contacts different sources for help with her research, including some people online, and she is eventually put in touch with archeologist Richard Buckley (Addy) of Leicester University; he is at first very skeptical of Philippa's claims. Buckley's department loses its funding, however, and this pushes Buckley to contact Philippa and take her more seriously (she had promised to arrange for funding). The two begin to work together to find Richard. Philippa's ex-husband John (Coogan) is initially skeptical himself, but as he witnesses Philippa's sincere passion for this project, he slowly becomes a believer, as do Philippa's sons, who initially think their mother is cracking up mentally.

Part of the movie deals with the idea that Philippa tends to trust her gut feelings, and this intuitive approach is in stark contrast with the more staid, sober, and scientifically methodical approach of legitimate career scientists. So the movie contains a bit of a "heart versus head" dynamic to it, with Philippa's gut feelings ultimately triumphing as the parking lot is excavated... and King Richard III's bones are found almost immediately, as the team is digging the first of several planned trenches. Another scholar, John Ashdown-Hill (Fleet), has been working on tracing Richard III's descendants, some of whom he had tracked to Canada. Ashdown-Hill says that confirming whether the found body is indeed that of King Richard III is merely a matter of DNA testing. The remains at the site seem to confirm that the person in question was between 20 and 40 years old (Richard died at age 32). The body had received a blow to the head, possibly from a sword, and the most telling feature was the spine, which showed severe scoliosis. Richard had long been described as a "hunchback," which is not the same condition, but it's possible that people of that era simply didn't have the medical vocabulary to make the distinction.

Philippa ends up feeling vindicated, and King Richard III's body is interred with full honors at Leicester Cathedral—in acceptance of the reality that he had been a proper king, not a mere usurper. Richard Buckley is awarded an honorary doctorate, and Langley receives an MBE (Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) for her efforts at spearheading Richard's exhumation. The movie ends on a happy note.

This was a cute and spare film, simple in plot, and with a bit of fanciful whimsy thrown in. The real Philippa Langley did say she had had something like an out-of-body experience around the time she became convinced that Richard was buried under that parking lot; the apparition in the film could possibly be a nod to that. (In the movie's conclusion, Philippa has a chance to meet Pete, the actor she had seen playing Richard III.) In real life, things have not been so pleasant between Langley and the University of Leicester. The real Richard Buckley is considering legal action against the filmmakers, and the university drafted a letter of protest against how the institution was portrayed in the film, i.e., unwilling to help at first, then rushing in to take all the credit once the discovery had been made. As I mentioned at the beginning, though, the film doesn't shy away from the fact that it approaches the story firmly from Philippa's perspective, so there's no hiding of bias. I can only hope that all parties will ultimately come to some sort of civil agreement.

A major theme in the film is the injustice of maligning someone who is unable to defend himself. Philippa feels a personal connection with King Richard—whom she sees as unfairly maligned—because her efforts to track down the king's burial site forced her to skip work, and she was unable to defend herself when her somewhat unscrupulous boss began to suggest that Philippa's ME was the reason she was skipping work. Another major theme is perseverance in pursuit of a dream; Philippa's joyful passion as she tracks Richard down inspires others and even begins to heal her broken family.

Stephen Frears is a fairly unpretentious director; a bit like Clint Eastwood, he's often content to just point the camera and let the actors do their thing. The result, in this case, is a movie that's fairly quiet, placidly paced, but sprinkled with glittering bits of humor here and there. The actors all do a good job in their roles, but the story doesn't require screaming or tears, so things can be a bit bland, emotionally speaking. Maybe the overall lack of intense drama is better that way since the discovery of King Richard's body is itself such a historically monumental occasion (the death of Richard apparently marks the end of the Middle Ages for Britain), dwarfing everything and everyone around it. Sally Hawkins's Philippa is by turns timid in the face of disapproving academics and fanatically faithful to her vision of a rehabilitated Richard. With her thin, weak frame and her bobbed hairdo, Hawkins's Philippa often looks like a lost little boy from a distance. I wonder whether that was intentional. Steve Coogan, as ex-husband John, is flawed, compassionate, and ultimately supportive of his ex-wife. Mark Addy's portrayal of archeologist Richard Buckley swings between smarmy and noble; Buckley isn't the best ally Philippa could have, but he's the best ally she's got, so he'll have to do. Harry Lloyd, as both Pete the actor and King Richard's ghost, inhabits Richard with dignity and gravitas. Because the apparition is a product of Philippa's imagination, though, the ghostly Richard speaks in fairly modern, if stilted, English. Ah, yes: faithful watchers of the YouTube channel Tasting History will immediately recognize Scottish stand-up comic and tour guide Bruce Fummey (in the role of Hamish, a member of the local Richard III Society); he has a minor role as one of the people who encourage Philippa to continue her research. Fummey has his own YouTube channel as well: Scotland History Tours. He ended up on Max Miller's Tasting History channel when Miller went to Scotland. Fummey is ethnically Scots-Ghanaian.

Does the movie play fast and loose with the facts? Well, the University of Leicester would say yes for sure. Some of the online criticism I've seen would seem to agree, e.g., in how certain scientific procedures are portrayed, or in scientists' cartoonishly arrogant attitude toward amateurs. Still, as a story, "The Lost King" is engaging if not exactly compelling, and it might very well be worth your time. I found the story entertaining as a fictionalized inside look.

ADDENDUM:

My buddy Mike had asked me, long ago, for a picture he could use online—one of him as Richard III. Mike's blog has been defunct since 2021, but that picture lives on.