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10 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 10 NOVEMBER 2019 FILM FILM I really hope it's not becoming a trend. Both last year's Mary Queen of Scots (dir. Josie Ro- urke) and this year's The King (dir. David Michôd) appear to be crafted under the assump- tion that merely slowing down the pace of a film to a deathly crawl and lowering its bright- ness to its lowest setting is all that it takes to lend these ex- amples of historical 'heritage cinema' the right amount of gravitas and seriousness. But as a young Bard from Stratford-Upon-Avon has aptly demonstrated centuries ago, no amount of scenery can trump compellingly written dialogue and characters. In fact, when crafting his tetralogy of plays of which Henry V is part — that play being the keystone text for Michod's film — William Shake- speare had no stage design at his company's disposal at all, rely- ing on prologues and choruses to supply all the necessary visual and contextual information. But while nobody is suggest- ing that we turn films back into talky plays, I'd argue that the talk — of which there is a lot here in any case — needs to be of a far better quality for this nearly two and half hour epic from Net- flix to fully deserve our time. Co-penned by Michôd himself alongside a key member of the cast — Joel Edgerton, here tak- ing on the iconic role of John Fal- staff — 'The King' rolls together Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1, Henry IV, Part 2 and Henry V to tell the story of how a dour, emo- tionally distant Henry Prince of Wales, or 'Prince Hal' (Timothée Chalamet) eventually becomes a dour, emotionally distant King of England — Henry V. More keen on spending time in taverns with his friends and John Falstaff — who in this version has some military history — Hal is uninterested in his dying fa- ther's (Ben Mendhelson) war ef- forts, and refuses to be nudged to taking the mantle of King upon his father's passing. The honour is ultimately bestowed upon his younger brother Thomas (Dean- Charles Chapman), before it is revealed to be a poisoned chal- ice as both brothers now inherit their father's ongoing feud with France, and his expansive, mur- derous ambitions towards the country. Forced to take on the royal mantle and also lead the war effort after the French yield a provocation too many (escalat- ing from insulting gifts to down- right assassination attempts), Hal is put on the greased path to becoming Henry V, and strong- armed into going head to head with the eccentric French Dau- phin (Robert Pattinson) and his army. While the Archbishop of Canterbury (Andrew Havill) watches impatiently for the war to start and William Gascoigne (Sean Harris) steps in to serve as Henry's taciturn advisor, Henry drafts in his old drinking buddy Falstaff to provide some much- needed honest advice, hard-won from battles of yore. What is certainly not hard-won is Timothée Chalamet's strato- spheric rise to fame following his starring role in the Luca Guad- agnino's much-feted Call Me By Your Name (2017). While the young actor's boyish looks cer- tainly run in tandem with the youthfulness that is Hal's cross to bear as he attempts to rally the court on his side, his mumbly, one-note delivery and a botched British accent do him no favours in getting the audience to root for him. It's just as well that Michôd then rings him with some true dramatic stalwarts, chief of them being an amusingly gruff Edger- ton — more the haunted military stalwart than Shakespeare's cor- pulent wastrel — and a crimi- nally gone-too-soon Mendhel- son. Also underused is Robert Netf lix's attempt at weighty historical drama attempts to capitalise on Timothée Chalamet's star power, but he hardly packs enough wattage to elegantly carry this dour and lumbering beast to the finish line Teodor Reljic Unsurprisingly, Shakespeare did it better