Dir: Stephen Frears. Starring: Sally Hawkins, Steve Coogan, Harry Lloyd. 12A, 108 minutes.
The true lives of so many kings, queens, and emperors have been lost to history – their faces scratched off coins, their names scrubbed from the record, and, in the case of Richard III, their stories turned into villainous pageantry by one William Shakespeare. Separating fact from historical propaganda is steady and ponderous work, a series of slow-motion spats confined to lecture theatres and academic annuals. It’s hardly the stuff of celluloid dreams. That’s what led to the hypocrisy of The Lost King, Stephen Frears’s comedy drama about the discovery of Richard III’s skeleton. Its self-congratulatory crusade to restore its subject’s reputation has, for the sake of entertainment, distorted reality to the point that it borders on farce.
