Review: King Lear

With its assured direction, engaging visuals, and featuring a murderers' row of British actors, the latest telling of Shakespeare's King Lear certainly can't be faulted, yet one gets the nagging sense that it is not quite 100%. Yes, the Bard's themes remain ever potent, but the film doesn't quite have the impact or the resonance that one would expect. It skims the surface rather than deep dives into one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies.

Nevertheless, despite whittling the play down to less than two hours, one can't argue against the casting of Anthony Hopkins who, at the age of 80, is the same age as the titular monarch. Unsurprisingly, Hopkins dominates as the ageing Lear, titanic yet tender, bellowing but broken, refusing to go gentle into that good night and then accepting that all must eventually end in darkness.

Set in a contemporary, militarised London but maintaining Shakespeare's original language, the film begins as Lear prepares to divide his kingdom amongst his three daughters. Before they get each their share, they have to declare their love and allegiance to him. His two eldest daughters, Goneril (Emma Thompson) and Regan (Emily Watson), are fulsome in their expressions. His youngest and most favoured daughter Cordelia (Florence Pugh), however, is not. Unlike her sisters, she speaks honestly - she loves him but has no words to fully convey the depth of her love; she loves him according to her bond, no more, no less. Infuriated by what he views as a betrayal, Lear disinherits her and banishes her from the kingdom. Also exiled is the Earl of Kent (Downton Abbey's Jim Carter) for criticising his unfair treatment of Cordelia, though he will later return under a different guise and be hired as Lear's servant.

The Earl of Gloucester (Jim Broadbent), himself to be involved in a similar power struggle with his bastard son Edmund (John Macmillan) and his legitimate eldest son Edgar (Andrew Scott), notes to Lear that, by divesting Cordelia's shares to Goneril and Regan, he has effectively put their respective husbands, the Duke of Albany (Anthony Calf) and the Duke of Cornwall (Tobias Menzies) into greater positions of power. Indeed, Lear soon discovers the consequences of his actions when both Goneril and Regan, annoyed by the boorishness of their father's entourage, turn him away from their homes, culminating in the powerful image of the former king reduced to being a homeless man pushing around a shopping cart.

Though all three actresses are fantastic as Lear's daughters, it is Thompson as the coldblooded, lustful and power-hungry Goneril that sears herself into one's memory. Watson and, to a lesser extent, Menzies run a close second by virtue of the thoroughly discomfiting scene in which Regan and her husband perform an eye-gouging on the Earl of Gloucester.

King Lear

Directed by: Richard Eyre

Written by: Richard Eyre; based on the play by William Shakespeare

Starring: Anthony Hopkings, Emma Thompson, Emily Watson, Florence Pugh, Jim Broadbent, Andrew Scott, John Macmillan, Jim Carter, Christopher Eccleston, Tobias Menzies