‘The Lost King’ rules as history/mystery tour
Based on the remarkable true story of the search for the remains of the last Plantagenet King Richard III in a car park, “The Lost King” has a fascinating pedigree. Two-time Academy Award nominee Steve Coogan cowrote the screenplay with his “Philomena” co-writer Jeff Pope based on the book by Philippa Langley, the person who led to the amazing 2012 discovery. Langley then produced the 2013 television film “Richard III: The King in the Car Park” and is an executive producer of this lovely, educational and mostly entertaining offshoot. The film’s director is the masterful Stephen Frears, whose career received a shot in the arm in 1985 when “My Beautiful Laundrette” received rave reviews, and he continued earning rave reviews through to the aforementioned “Philomena” with Coogan and Judi Dench and the Emmy Award-winning TV series “A Very English Scandal.”
“The Lost King” costars an appealing, deeply sympathetic Sally Hawkins (“The Shape of Water”) as Philippa, a 40-something Edinburgh mother who works unhappily in sales, suffers from ME aka chronic fatigue syndrome and lives with her two video-gaming school-age sons. Also present is Philippa’s estranged, but still caring husband John Langley (Coogan). John is there for the most part for his sons. But he becomes his estranged wife’s ardent supporter when after attending a performance of Shakespeare’s “Richard III” and having visions of the dead king in cape and crown sitting on a bench in her backyard, she becomes obsessed with finding his lost human remains.
Philippa fervently believes that Richard was demonized by the Tudor dynasty that followed his short reign on the throne. She does not believe that Richard had a hunchback or had his princeling nephews murdered in the Tower of London. She also talks to Richard’s ghost (Harry Lloyd) in scenes that work only if you give this unlikely true story the benefit of the doubt and go along with it (I did). Philippa visits a local bookstore, buys all the books they have on Richard and joins a local Richard III Society and meets her similarly driven, eccentric peers. She attends a lecture by the first of several brutish and dismissive men she will encounter on her quest. This includes an executive from the University of Leicester, who argues against funding her essentially archaeological mission before trying to usurp it.
Philippa’s research leads her to believe that Richard’s body was buried beneath the choir of a Leicester church that has long since disappeared. But she figures out where the church was and is directed to find an “open space” i.e., the car park because Brits avoid building over old abbeys. She enlists the aid of gruff University of Leicester archaeologist Richard Buckley (Mark Addy) and wins him over.
In another one of the screenplay’s too obvious bits, Philippa has a tendency to rely on her “feelings” too much. Do you see what’s coming? I did. But she also finds facts and musters them. Like “The Dig” (2021), a film it resembles, along with “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and its sequels, “The Lost King” is in large part an archaeological mystery/ procedural, and if you like that sort of thing (I do), you will enjoy “The Lost King” in spite of the ill-advised, if likable ghost and the film’s formulaic nature.
“The Lost King” is also the well-cast-and-directed story of a seemingly ordinary woman who prevails over meddlesome, unpleasant and powerful men and proves that she is capable of working a wonder. That no previous Richard III scholar was able to put the pieces together to locate the King’s remains is hard to believe. But it is true, and that gives “The Lost King” another reason to be seen and enjoyed.
(“The Lost King” contains profanity and suggestive material)