The King (2019 film)

Henry, Prince of Wales (called "Hal" by his close friends), is the emotionally distant eldest and wastrel son of King Henry IV of England. Hal is uninterested in his father's war policies and in succeeding him, and spends his days drinking, whoring, and jesting with his companion John Falstaff in Eastcheap. His father summons Hal and informs him that Hal's younger brother, Thomas, will inherit the throne instead of Hal. Thomas is sent to subdue Hotspur's rebellion but is upstaged by the arrival of Hal, who engages Hotspur in single combat. The sword fight descends into an armoured fistfight, and Hal kills Hotspur with a dagger. Although this decides the battle without further conflict, Thomas complains that Hal has stolen all the glory. Shortly thereafter, Thomas is killed in battle after taking his campaign to Wales.

Henry IV dies in his bed with Hal present, and Hal is crowned King Henry V. Hal is determined not to be like his father, and opts for peace and conciliation with his father's adversaries, despite his actions being seen as weakness. At his coronation feast, the Dauphin of France sends Hal a ball, as an insulting and emasculating coronation gift. However, Hal chooses to frame this as a positive reflection of his boyhood before being crowned. His sister Philippa, now the Queen of Denmark, cautions that nobles in any royal court have their own interests in mind and will never fully reveal their true intentions.

Hal interrogates a captured assassin who claims to have been sent by King Charles VI of France to assassinate Hal. The English nobles Cambridge and Grey are approached by French agents hoping to induce them to the French cause. Their trust in the new young king wavers, and they then approach Hal's Chief Justice, William Gascoigne, with their concerns. Gascoigne advises the young king that a show of strength is necessary to unite England, so to prove his competency, 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, with Hal at the forefront and Falstaff as his marshal. After completing the Siege of Harfleur, they continue on the campaign but are followed by the Dauphin, who repeatedly tries to provoke Hal. The English advance parties stumble upon a vast French army gathering to face them. Dorset advises Hal to retreat due to the superiority of the French forces, but Falstaff proposes a false advance to lure the French to rush forward into the mud, 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 flanking force hidden in the nearby woods.

Hal goes to the Dauphin and offers to fight in single combat to decide the battle, but the Dauphin refuses. The Battle of Agincourt commences, with Hal in the thick of the fighting. Falstaff's plan works, and the outnumbered English army overpowers the French. Hal orders all the French prisoners executed for fear that they might regroup, an order that Falstaff had refused to carry out before the battle.

Following the decisive victory, the English continue deeper into France. Hal reaches King Charles VI, who offers his surrender and the hand of his daughter Catherine of Valois. Hal returns to England with his new wife for the celebrations. He comes to her room to have a conversation, and she challenges his reasons for invading France. She denies that the French assassin and the insult originated from her father or her brother and dismisses Hal when he falls back on echoing the sentiments of others, sentiments Hal had dismissed earlier in the campaign. Hal realizes that the supposed French insult and acts of aggression against England were staged by Gascoigne to goad Hal into war. Hal confronts Gascoigne, confirms his suspicions, and an unashamed Gascoigne declares that peace comes only through victory. In cold fury, Hal kills Gascoigne and returns to Catherine, asking that she promises to always speak the truth to him.

Filming on location at Berkeley Castle, Gloucestershire, UK.

In 2013, it was revealed that Joel Edgerton and David Michôd had collaborated on writing an adaptation of Shakespeare's "Henriad" plays, Henry IV, Parts 1 & 2 and Henry V, for Warner Bros. Pictures.[7][8][9] In September 2015, it was announced that Michôd would direct the project, with Warner Bros. producing and distributing the film, and Lava Bear producing.[10]

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.[11] In March 2018, Edgerton joined the cast of the film.[12] 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.[13][14]

Principal photography began on 1 June 2018 and wrapped on 24 August.[13][15]

The film had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on 2 September 2019.[20] It screened at the BFI London Film Festival on 3 October 2019,[21][22] and received a limited release on 11 October 2019 before being released on Netflix, for digital streaming, on 1 November 2019.[23]

The movie was criticized for being widely inaccurate to both reality and the Shakespearean play. Being loosely based on several works of English playwright Shakespeare, the film contains many of the same ahistorical dramatizations and biases as its source material, including the introduction of wholly fictional characters and episodes as well as mischaracterizations of historical persons, not the least of which being Henry himself. Portrayed as a perpetually-inebriated, sullen, ne'er-do-well, Henry of Monmouth was in real life so engaged and experienced in battle that he almost died from an arrow to the face, which they subtly reference with the large facial scar he wears in the film. Not unlike the 16th century plays, the film was met with criticism by historians, with Christophe Gilliot, director of the French museum Azincourt 1415, suggesting it has "Francophobe tendencies".[31]

Here is a non-exhaustive list of the most important historical inaccuracy present in the film and not corresponding to reality according to Gilliot:[32]

• King Henry V was neither humanist nor pacifist. The real Henry V was known to be bellicose, aggressive and warlike. The war against France is not the result of a plot against the King, but the continuity of the foreign policy of his ancestors, claiming the rights of the English crown to the throne of France. Henry wanted to establish his legitimacy. After the battle of Agincourt, he had all the French prisoners executed, most of them gathered in barns and burnt alive, their throats slashed or their heads smashed with blows. He reduced the population of Rouen to starvation during the siege of the city from July 1418 to January 1419, killing 35,000 in six months.
• William Gascoigne was not killed by Henry V, but was dismissed by him from the start of his reign, reputed to be too close to his father.
• Henry V never gave up his responsibilities as Prince of Wales, and it was not the death of his brother that pushed him to accept the crown. Furthermore, his brother did not die in Wales, but in France, and eight years after his brother's coronation.
• The Dauphin of France, Louis de Guyenne was present neither at the siege of Harfleur nor at the battle of Agincourt. In addition, the cinematographic version of the character, interpreted by Robert Pattinson, is far from reality. Presented as an arrogant, silly and brutal character, the Dauphin, who died two months after the battle of Agincourt, was in fact a pious young man in fragile health.
• The battle of Agincourt did not take place in such a hilly and green place, as the film shows, but on fallow fields and plowing in the plains. In addition, it was the English who held the heights, and not the French as the film suggests.

• The King on Netflix
• The King on IMDb