BEFORE: Timothée Chalamet carries over from "Call Me by Your Name", and what's up with this kid, anyway? One July day in 2018 I was watching "Hostiles" and saying, "Hey, isn't that the kid that was in "Lady Bird"? Yep, I think it is." Fast forward a year or two, and suddenly he's in three films in a row, and four this year. By my calculations, if I project forward from here, statistically this means that next year he's going to be in every film set to be released. (It's just math, you can't argue with it.). Maybe the filming slowdown caused by the pandemic will affect this, or maybe it will still happen, there's no way to tell.
Seriously, though, it's like he's the new Leonardo DiCaprio or something - remember that time when it seemed like Leo was in every movie. (I just checked Leo's IMDB page, I guess this didn't really happen, after "Titanic" he was never in more than two big films in any calendar year, but they were always BIG ONES, so it just kind of felt like he was everywhere.). Maybe Nicolas Cage is a better example, that guy would take any acting job there for a while, 5 or 6 releases a year - but then, the analogy doesn't work because he's much older. It'll come to me, just give it some time. Chalamet was even in the most recent Woody Allen film, "A Rainy Day in New York", and Woody's one of those directors that I like to keep current on, like the Coen brothers - if I find out there's one of theirs I haven't seen, it goes right to the wish list. Only nobody's showing "A Rainy Day in New York", none of the streaming services, so either it's terrible, or Woody's still being blacklisted for marrying his daughter and other allegations, it's tough to tell.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Henry V" (Movie #2,004)
THE PLOT: Hal, wayward prince and heir to the English throne, is crowned King Henry V after his tyrannical father dies. Now the young king must navigate palace politics, the war his father left behind, and the emotional strings of his past life.
AFTER: Robert Pattinson, that's it! Timothée Chalamet is like the new Robert Pattinson! Remember a couple years after the "Twilight" movies came out, when it felt like Robert Pattinson was the flavor of the month, and he was in every movie, like, umm, "Water for Elephants" and, uh, "Maps to the Stars"? "Queen of the Desert"? "The Lost City of Z"? Now I feel like I'm maybe the only person who watched all of those movies, and I still have yet to watch the "Twilight" films. This October, I swear, they're on the list. But with Pattinson playing the French "dauphin" (prince) here, and facing off against Chalamet's Henry V, it sort of felt a bit like he was handing off the "dark moody teenager in every movie" mantle. Don't worry for Pattinson, it's his turn to be Batman next, so I think he's going to be fine.
I did a whole chain last year on British kings and queens (and a couple kings that were queens, if you know what I mean...). I covered Robert the Bruce, Mary Queen of Scots, Queen Anne, Queen Victoria (if you count her comic appearance in "Holmes & Watson"), plus Edward VIII and George VI in "W.E." Then in January of this year I got back to Queen Victoria in "The Young Victoria". What's odd is that I see now where this film could have slid easily into last year's chain, right between "King Arthur" and "Robin Hood", which is a connection I made with the film "Darkest Hour". I'm going to defend myself by saying that this film probably wasn't available at the time, since it wasn't released until November. However, it could also have linked to "The Young Victoria" in January, via Tom Fisher. I guess I either missed that connection, or figured it would have messed with my plans. Yeah, that's it, let's go with that.
What a difference 66 years makes - the last version of this story that I watched was the 1944 version directed by Laurence Olivier, which came straight from the Shakespeare version. I just went back and read my review and I was struck back then with how many soldiers were wearing leotards and funny hats on the field of battle, which didn't make much sense strategically, and probably came from the stagings of Shakespeare's play that were being done at the time. In this film, the soldiers wear armor, real metal armor, and it's heavy and makes it hard for some of them to move around. But that's significant, and it factors into the strategy of the Battle of Agincourt. Which, I remember my history teachers telling me, was won by the British at least in part because of the invention of the longbow. Long-range weapons turned the tide...
But there's more to the story here, Henry V's military adviser, John Falstaff (I think he was another character drawn from Shakespeare, and not historical events) believes that it will rain the night before the battle, and the soldiers wearing heavy armor and riding horses will get stuck in the mud, and they could be easily taken down by soldiers flanking them from both sides who are NOT wearing heavy armor. A small English force wearing armor could be sent out to lure all the French soldiers on to the battlefield, at which time the longbows could be shot from afar, then the non-armor wearing men could swoop in, stick and move, and take down the French while they're knee-deep in mud. Looks good on paper, anyway.
This is more or less how it went down, at least when compared to the battle record that's on Wikipedia. It was definitely muddy, the Frenchmen were in hevay armor and were exhausted by the time they reached the English ranks, and for some reason the French army had put their own archers at the rear of their forces, which doesn't seem like a good idea, especially if they didn't have the same longbows as the English did. And those English archers were the ones who rushed in to fight hand-to-hand without armor, after they launched those initial arrows. The French started with more soldiers (some accounts say 12,000 to England's 9,000) but suffered many more casualties, at least 6,000 (Shakespeare said 10,000) to England's 112. It wasn't even close.
There's an alternate theory proposed here regarding the justification for the Battle of Agincourt - allegedly there's a claim that the French sent an assassin to kill Henry V, and this prompts Henry to invade France with an army and this led to the Siege of Harfleur in Normandy, precursor to Agincourt. But later, when Henry returns to England with his new princess bride Catherine, she claims her father would never have the nerve an assassin, and her brother the Dauphin would be too stupid to think of it. So, assuming Catherine's telling the truth, who did send the assassin? Was Henry ever in any real danger from an assassin at all? In this telling of the tale, Henry decides to follow the money and find out who might benefit from a war with France, and this part may be a bit controversial to some historians. Did this also come from Shakespeare, I wonder, or is it a more modern addition to the story? According to what I just read, Henry V did not retain the same advisers his father did, which makes sense if he was trying to be a different kind of king. Advance question for Father's Day, don't we all try to be better, or at least different from our fathers, only to find out later that in some ways we've turned out exactly the same?
Also starring Joel Edgerton (last seen in "King Arthur"), Robert Pattinson (last seen in "The Lost City of Z"), Sean Harris (last seen in "Mission: Impossible - Fallout"), Thomasin McKenzie (last seen in "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies"), Ben Mendelsohn (last seen in "Robin Hood"), Tom Glynn-Carney (last seen in "Tolkien"), Lily-Rose Depp (last seen in "Yoga Hosers"), Dean-Charles Chapman (last seen in "1917"), Thibault de Montalembert (last seen in "Jefferson in Paris"), Edward Ashley (also last seen in "The Lost City of Z"), Stephen Fewell, Tara Fitzgerald (last seen in "Legend"), Andrew Havill (last seen in "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker"), Tom Fisher (last seen in "The Young Victoria"), Ivan Kaye (last seen in "Layer Cake"), Steven Elder, Philip Rosch, Tom Lacroix, Jeremy Chevillotte, Tom Lawrence, Lucas Hansen, Vincent Latorre, Harry Trevaldwyn.
RATING: 6 out of 10 coronation gifts
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