The King: Netflix does Falstaff, Hal, and Henry V [Media Notes 13]

I cruised over to Netflix late yesterday afternoon (Friday, November 1) and saw lo and behold! they were pushing a new Netflix original movie, The King. By the look of things it was a medieval knights in grungy armor epic; then I noticed it was about Henry V of England. Shakespeare? I wondered. We’ll see. After dinner.

And so it was. I’ve looked through a few reviews, which noted that it was loosely based on Shakespeare’s plays, Henry IV, Part I, Henry IV, Part II, and Henry V. Very loosely I’d say. I wouldn’t have expected Shakespeare’s dialog, because Netflix didn’t present it as Shakespeare, they presented it as, well, Netflix, directed by David Michôd. But the story itself departed from Shakespeare – as I remember it from having read it years ago – in significant ways, even allowing for the compression involved in giving the substance of three plays in a film of two and a quarter hours.

I wondered if perhaps Michôd hadn’t gone behind Shakespeare to the historical record and thus given us a ‘truer more authentic’ version of the story. I have no way of judging as I know the story only through Shakespeare. And I rather suspect that the audience for the film is more likely to know Shakespeare’s version than whatever a truer version might be if, that is, they have any prior knowledge of the story at all.

I can’t see that Michôd attempted to play his version against Shakespeare’s version. Oh, there was a moment – spoiler alert – about a half hour into it. Sir John Falstaff was at supper quaffing an ale (I assume it was ale, the quaffing was evident) and remarked that when his buddy Hal becomes king, aye, then he’ll have access to the very top of the kingdom. Not so fast, my boyo, not so fast, thought I. Just you wait and see. I was thinking, of course, of one of the best-known scenes in Shakespeare’s version, indeed, one of the best-known scenes in all of Shakespeare: the Rejection of Falstaff. Prince Hal has become King Henry V. Falstaff comes to court expecting to be whisked to the side of his old carousing buddy. Instead, the King casts him aside.

Whoops! It doesn’t happen, not in this film. Michôd has flipped the Shakespearean script on its buttocks. Not only does his young king not reject Falstaff, he makes him head of his troops! Michôd’s Falstaff is the one who devises the strategy that allows the outnumbered English to demolish the French at Agincourt, and, get this, Falstaff leads a detachment into battle in a false attack meant to draw the French onto a muddy battlefield where the muck defeats them. It was a suicide mission and, appropriately, Sir John is killed.

This is not Shakespeare’s Falstaff, not in a million miles and a million years. Oh yes, Michôd’s Falstaff likes to carouse, as did Shakespeare’s, and he is skeptical about battle, but Shakespeare’s Falstaff goes beyond skepticism to life-preserving contempt. He would never have hatched such a tactic or volunteered to lead the charge. And of course Henry would never have taken him into battle as head of his army. The mirth, girth, and earthy ways of Shakespeare’s Falstaff so dominates Henry IV, Part I and Henry IV, Part II that he has attracted the lion’s share of critical attention, not Hal, and certainly not Henry IV. Michôd’s Falstaff is a big man, but he’s not obese; he’s thickly muscled. Fit for battle if battle must come.

What of it? After all, this is not a filmed version of Shakespeare. It is a retelling of the story in a different age. Michôd’s story is a much grimmer story than Shakespeare’s. The King climaxes with the battle of Agincourt. I don’t know how long the battle runs on screen, 10, 15 minutes, perhaps more. It’s a gritty, grimy battle. No glory here. Just slogging it out. Shakespeare may not have had the means to put such a spectacle on stage, but he was no romantic about war and battle. He just had to express his loathing by other means. That’s what Falstaff was for, to repeatedly point out and insist that war is an ugly dirty business and glory is a sham.

And yet Henry V is a triumphal play. The young king wins a glorious victory and takes a beautiful bride. England is united once again. All’s well with the world.

Shakespeare was looking back in time. He himself lived in a glorious age, if I may so indulge, ruled by a glorious monarch. He saw England’s past with the optimism of his own time. He was reprising the history of his people, the English.

Michôd’s time is quite different. It is our time, and we are not (so) optimistic. England’s past is not our past, and here I speak, not as an American, citizen of a country born in rebellion against England, but simply as a citizen of the 21st century. Regardless of where you hale from, neither Henry’s 15th century nor Shakespeare’s 16th century is a living past. Both are so long ago and far away that they might as well be the world of Star Wars but for the costumes and the weaponry. The world of The King is but a world, a world out of time for a world that is anxiously seeking hope for a future.

It is not here, not now. It merely is.