Acouple of years ago, the gently charming Brit pic The Dig told the “true-life” story of autodidactic archaeologist Basil Brown (played with low-key aplomb by Ralph Fiennes) being sidelined from the unearthing of the Sutton Hoo treasures by a snobby establishment attempting to take credit for his work. That winning formula is revisited in this latest seriocomic drama from the team behind 2013’s Oscar-nominated Philomena: director Stephen Frears, writer Jeff Pope and writer-actor Steve Coogan. In The Lost King, it’s Sally Hawkins’s amateur historian-sleuth Philippa Langley who gets to butt heads with the archaeological establishment as she pursues her dream to find the mortal remains of the much-maligned King Richard III.The Lost King 2022 Movie Download.
“Sent before my time into this breathing world,” is how Shakespeare’s Richard famously describes himself, “scarce half made up, and that so lamely and unfashionable that dogs bark at me.” These are words that pierce Philippa’s troubled heart, her ME having left her feeling shunned and ridiculed, her job at risk. Meanwhile at home, her marriage to John (Steve Coogan) has collapsed, yet the two remain tetchily close, sharing the care of their young sons.When Philippa reads a biography of Richard that highlights the disconnect between his reputation (a deformed, wicked usurper) and his “true” self (none of the above), she resolves to set the record straight. So, after a couple of pub meetings with fellow Ricardians (self-described oddballs and misfits), she’s banging on the doors of the establishment, seeking funding to dig up Richard’s bones, which she has become convinced lie under a car park in Leicester.
Anyone familiar with the real-life story (which is presumably everybody) already knows the stranger-than-fiction twist; that Langley was guided to that car park by “an overwhelming urge” that left her with “goosebumps” when she stood on a particular spot, spookily marked with an “R”. In The Lost King, the puntastic truth that Langley followed a “hunch” is dramatised through visions of a handsomely theatrical King Richard (Harry Lloyd) who haunts Philippa’s waking dreams and leads her search, sometimes on horseback.