The Lost King
Directed by Stephen Frears
Written by Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope
Starring Sally Hawkins, Steve Coogan, Mark Addy
Runtime: 108 min
Rated PG-13
Opening in select theaters March 24

by Daniel Pecoraro, Staff Writer

I’ll admit it: I’m the kind of person who appreciates a research montage. It’s far from realistic — the hours of turning every page in the archives looking for new findings, or at least a new perspective, are slow and plodding. But it’s fun to see the social sciences combined with an emotional fervor.

If you’re like me, then, you’ll enjoy The Lost King, the based-on-a-true-story archaeological caper starring Sally Hawkins. Hawkins plays Philippa Langley, who we see in a personal and professional funk. She’s quasi-separated from her husband, John (Steve Coogan), who co-parents their two boys; she’s passed over for a promotion at her sales office in Edinburgh. Her escape from these two-thirds of The Rembrandts’ trinity (her job’s a joke, her love life’s DOA) comes through a performance of Shakespeare’s Richard III. The play ignites a curiosity in her about Richard’s true story, and its differences from his popular portrayal. The Richard-as-hunchback trope particularly hits home, as Philippa lives with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME). She starts seeing visions of the actor who portrayed Richard in the play (Harry Lloyd), skips off work, reads every book on Richard she can find, and joins the local chapter of the Richard III Society in a hotel lobby bar. 

The motley gang of folks who attend the Society’s meetings inspire Philippa to find the remains of Richard and give him a proper burial, fit with a royal coat of arms. Soon she’s off on a train to Leicester, where she takes a cue from John Ashdown-Hill (James Fleet) to “look in an open space” for the former Greyfriars church that was rumored to be Richard’s burial site. Philippa convinces the other two Richards in the film—Richard Buckley, the archaeologist at the University of Leicester (Mark Addy, best known as Robert Baratheon from Game of Thrones), and Richard Taylor (Lee Ingleby), the very model of a pompous university administrator—to begin the project, and the search for Greyfriars, and Richard, begins in earnest.

Hawkins performs brilliantly in the role of Philippa Langley, her face and demeanor articulating the relentless drive and curiosity of her character with skill. It's also another film in Hawkins' oeuvre complexly portraying a character with a disability, a welcome achievement. Coogan, who co-wrote the screenplay with Jeff Pope, brings both his trademark humor and a welcome evolution from wisecracking ex to caring partner and father. (The deadpan line read upon hearing the results of the dig from Philippa brought the house down.) The score by Alexandre Desplat enhances the drama of the proceedings, and credit should be given to Coogan, Pope, and props director Daryl Campbell for subtlely but clearly placing the film in time (the boys seeing Skyfall with John; Philippa’s early iOS phone).  

The film takes some liberties with Langley’s story; she was a “Ricardian” for a number of years prior to the archaeology project, and had first gone into screenwriting before the dig. The magical realism of Philippa’s relationship with her visions of Richard are a bit overplayed by the end. And, yes, the historical montages are silly fun. But The Lost King certainly portrays a more accurate picture of archaeology than the Indiana Jones or The Librarian series (both of which I also love). But The Lost King shows that truth is stranger than fiction — that Richard III can be found buried underneath a parking lot, and that an amateur can prove the lifelong scholars of history and archaeology wrong.