One of the best films in Netflix history — and yet it was ignored by critics and audiences

“Legitimate King” is impressive. In David Mackenzie’s film, responsible for opening the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival, the countless takes obtained using drones; the costumes, with meticulous reproductions of every detail seen in clothes from seven hundred years ago; The battles, an element of central importance in a production of this genre, choreographed with care, confirm Mackenzie’s preciousness, who delivers a brilliant film, making a thorny and obscure subject too dark for Brazilian tastes, arouse a passion for instilling universal themes such as greed, social conscience, the moral ruin of a family and the painful maturation of a nation. The director is one of the most skilled at extracting from the cast he works with what he deems essential in order to make the story he chose to tell great — and here, apparently trivial episodes are transformed into small epics within the mother epic as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

The protagonist’s scenic strength is the impulse that Mackenzie needs to delve into a universe of stories as fascinating as they are misaligned and bring to the surface the trajectory of Robert I (1274-1329), the sovereign of Scotland famous for leading a war against the English monarchy at the beginning of the 14th century. Chris Pine perfectly embodies the ideal of the demiurge, of the providing ruler who meets the needs of his people with paternal ecstasy, undoubtedly a pioneer of populism in banana republics around the world as we know it today. Scotland itself was then a territory whose geopolitical idiosyncrasies not even its citizens were able to grasp. Robert The Bruce fights for his empire, without hesitation about throwing the country into a long period of instability that continues even after his victory, which ends up spreading among all his subjects, from the high aristocracy to the most humble vassal, a cauldron of resentment that bubbles over time. The atmosphere of relative social peace gives way to the effervescence that grips the Scots, and “Legitimate King” makes an honest record of the phenomenon using a very well executed sequence plan, when pills of the authoritarian and misogynistic personality of the holder of the Crown of Scotland emerge.

As the film makes clear, Robert The Bruce and Edward I, the Prince of Wales played by Billy Howle, remain in an eternal dispute for the Scottish throne and for the leading role in the plot, a script constructed between Mackenzie and four other co-writers. Pine and Howle make their characters switch roles a few times, a complex narrative sophistication precisely because it emulates the naturalness of life itself, which gives (almost) no one either the beatitude of saints or the gratuitous evil of ice-hearted monsters who slaughter little children at the tip of their swords. Robert The Bruce and Edward I continue this game, being sometimes a villain, sometimes a hero, entertaining the public and taking part in the game as well. Until the terrain becomes a little less marshy and the sovereign of the Highlands assumes in “Legitimate King” that quality that the Scotsman David Mackenzie gives him. Placing Robert The Bruce as the patron of a series of guerrillas against a much more influential empire with much more offensive firepower, the director creates an admittedly boastful work, as his patricians end up beating the subjects of Edward 2nd (1284-1327), one of Henry 5th’s predecessors, in turn reviewed in “The King” (2019), brought to the screen by David Michôd.

Historical document and myth

An unoriginal reproduction of the argument of the fearless warrior who dares to attack a rival of formidable dimensions, used ad nauseam since pre-Christian antiquity, as seen in the biblical clash of David against Goliath, “Legitimate King” constitutes a document with due intellectual rigor on the disagreements between the Scots and English, which never leave the horizon of Scotland and England, misty beyond the meteorology — the appearance of Mary Stuart (1542-1587), another member of Scottish royalty who rises up against England, then ruled by Elizabeth I (1533-1603), an event portrayed in “Two Queens” (2018), directed by Josie Rourke, lends itself to a counterattack of fate so that the Anglo-Scottish quarrels once again gain strength. Three hundred after Robert The Bruce defeated Edward II’s army, James VI (1566-1625), a descendant of the Scottish monarch, is also crowned king of England, in a twist that only history — and life itself — can commit.

One of the many possible interpretations of the film also focuses on the need to put a finger on the eternal wounds of monarchies, which, removing the icing, is a form of government very similar to the dictatorships that plague several countries around the world in the 21st century. Robert The Bruce feels it in his own flesh, by remaining on the throne, while his wife, Elizabeth de Burgh (1289-1327), kidnapped by troops of the England. Despite being ephemeral, precisely because Mackenzie respects the paths taken by real history, Florence Pugh builds her character as usual, in a touching way, which makes the king’s agony even more vivid and reinvigorates the dilemma that great men (and, in countless cases, not so much) face along their journey. Governing is a superhuman exercise in renouncing banal desires for the rest of humanity.

Monarchy and the present

These stories from times so long ago, when powerful people held some respect for those who ruled, continue to amaze the common spectator, even though they are not always able to dissolve the veneer of the narrative and understand their context, being, at the end of this exasperatingly slow process, able to understand their place in the society in which they live. Seven centuries after Robert I, even though it enjoys democratic status and a constitution written based on values dear to republics, Scotland still has as its head of state a king, Charles III, subject to the throne of the United Kingdom and fourteen other “sovereign” and “independent” states since the death of his mother Elizabeth II (1926-2022), the longest-lived monarch in history of all time, who finally succumbed to a peaceful old age and nababesque, as have been all his 96 years, on September 8, 2022.

The Italian Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (1896-1957) wrote in “The Leopard”, published posthumously in 1958, that certain things change so that everything remains the same. It is difficult to find a better definition for dynasties, headed by anyone.