The Upcoming
  • Culture
    • Art
    • Cinema
      • Movie reviews
      • Film festivals
    • Food & Drinks
      • News & Features
      • Restaurant & bar reviews
      • Interviews & Recipes
    • Literature
    • Music
      • Live music
    • Theatre
    • Shows & On demand
  • Fashion & Lifestyle
    • Accessories
    • Beauty
    • News & Features
    • Shopping & Trends
    • Tips & How-tos
    • Fashion weeks
  • What’s On
    • Art exhibitions
    • Theatre shows
  • Tickets
  • Join us
    • Editorial unit
    • Our writers
    • Join the team
    • Join the mailing list
    • Fund us
    • Contact us
  • Interviews
  • Competitions
  • Special events
    • Film festivals
      • Berlin
      • Tribeca
      • Sundance London
      • Cannes
      • Locarno
      • Venice
      • London
      • Toronto
    • Fashion weeks
      • London Fashion Week
      • New York Fashion Week
      • Milan Fashion Week
      • Paris Fashion Week
      • Haute Couture
      • London Fashion Week Men’s
  • Facebook

  • Twitter

  • Instagram

  • YouTube

  • Tumblr

  • RSS


CultureCinemaMovie reviews

The White King

The White King | Movie review
23 January 2017
Sarah Bradbury
Avatar
Sarah Bradbury
23 January 2017

Movie and show review

Sarah Bradbury

The White King

★★★★★

Release date

27th January 2017

Certificate

UPG12A1518 title=

Links

TwitterFacebookWebsite

Based on the award-winning Hungarian novel of the same title by György Dragomán, sci-fi drama The White King is a modern-day Orwellian nightmare cinematically brought to life by Alex Helfrecht and Jörg Tittel.

Told through the eyes of 12-year-old Djata, a young boy living in a strange dystopian reality cut off from the rest of the world, a seemingly carefree life is thrown into turmoil at the sudden arrest of his father and the subsequent harassment of him and his mother as traitors. As authoritarian forces move in, and the pair are abandoned by the community around them, Djata must fight to survive and discover his father’s fate.

Stunning cinematic scenes are shot through with the sinister edge of all not being quite as it seems. Through limited contextual clues, the film plays with the audience’s perception of time and place, of oppression and freedom: an unnamed rural town in an undated era, fields, rivers, ramshackle housing and stripped-back living dominate the aesthetic. A blissful opening scene as the family frolic by a sun-drenched riverside is cut short by the stark brutality of a dictatorial political force. A hardy peasant life is anachronistically put side by side with supercars, supreme luxury and futuristic technology, exaggerating a gulf between a ruling class and repressed people, the rustic outdoors counter-intuitively becoming a kind of prison.

Each of the characters is presented through the innocent yet fundamentally biased lens of Djata’s gaze. Agyness Dean is his fierce yet fraught mother, Hannah, a woman as strong as she is desperate, as impressive as she is flawed, seeking to protect her son under the ever-watching eyes and brutal threat of the totalitarian regime. Through Djata we get up close to motherly tenderness, as well as moments of weakness as he must in turn reassure her as she stands helpless and starved. Ross Partridge is the ultimate ruggedly heroic father figure as Peter, with a rebellious and fun-loving spirit, not afraid to speak of the true nature of “Homeland” and stand up to its power. Jonathan Pryce and Fiona Shaw are brilliant as the boy’s loving but duplicitous grandparents. Offering an illusion of care and safety in their comparatively luxury lifestyle, the protagonist senses an undertone to their loyalties, caught powerfully as they both pressure him to shoot a gun, reminding him of the military prowess of his father before he defected.

But it’s Lorenzo Allchurch as Djata who is key to the success of the film: through him we experience one boy’s journey to find his father, understand the true nature of his reality and find his own place within it. Wide-eyed naivety quickly gives way to a tenacity and questioning inherited from his dissenting parents as his world unravels and he begins to confront those who impose the violent order. 

Being released in the UK in the wake of the inauguration of Trump as President of the United States – his unsavoury nationalistic rhetoric still reverberating in the world’s ears – The White King will no doubt have a dark resonance with our current reality, the Orwellian nightmare lurking in our midst seeming all too painfully easy to imagine.

★★★★★

Sarah Bradbury

The White King is released in selected cinemas on 27th January 2017.

Watch the trailer for The White King here:

Related Itemsreview

More in Movie reviews

Happy Death Day 2U

★★★★★
Musanna Ahmed
Read More

A Private War

★★★★★
Cristiana Ferrauti
Read More

The Kid Who Would Be King

★★★★★
Musanna Ahmed
Read More

Jellyfish

★★★★★
Laura Jorden
Read More

Instant Family

★★★★★
Musanna Ahmed
Read More

If Beale Street Could Talk

★★★★★
Guy Lambert
Read More

The Lego Movie 2

★★★★★
Guy Lambert
Read More

All Is True

★★★★★
Guy Lambert
Read More

Boy Erased

★★★★★
Mersa Auda
Read More
Scroll for more
Tap

Movie and show review

Sarah Bradbury

The White King

★★★★★

Release date

27th January 2017

Certificate

UPG12A1518 title=

Links

TwitterFacebookWebsite

Tickets

Theatre tickets

  • Popular

  • Latest

  • TOP PICKS

  • The Kid Who Would Be King
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • Everybody’s Talking About Jamie at the Apollo Theatre
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • Rip It Up: The 60s at Garrick Theatre
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • Mr Jones
    ★★★★★
    Berlinale
  • Bastille at Brixton Academy
    ★★★★★
    Live music
  • Riona Treacy autumn/winter 2019 collection presentation for LFW
    Fashion weeks
  • Idol (Woo Sang)
    ★★★★★
    Berlinale
  • Johan Ku autumn/winter 2019 collection catwalk show for LFW
    Fashion weeks
  • Reconstructing Utøya (Rekonstruktion Utøya)
    ★★★★★
    Berlinale
  • ISOSCELES Lingerie autumn/winter 2019 collection presentation for LFW
    Fashion weeks
  • Idol (Woo Sang)
    ★★★★★
    Berlinale
  • Reconstructing Utøya (Rekonstruktion Utøya)
    ★★★★★
    Berlinale
  • Tobacco Road
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • So Long, My Son (Di jiu tian chang): Wang Xiaoshuai’s expertly sprawling yet personal examination of three decades of life in China
    ★★★★★
    Berlinale
  • So Long, My Son (Di jiu tian chang) press conference with Wang Xiaoshuai, Du Jiang, Ai Liya, Yong Mei, Wang Jingchun, Qi Xi, Zhao Yanguozhang and Liu Xuan
    Berlinale

Instagram

Something is wrong.
Instagram token error.
The Upcoming
Pages
  • Contact us
  • Fund us
  • Join mailing list
  • Join us
  • Our London food map
  • Our writers
  • What, when, why

Copyright © 2018 FL Media Ltd

Sing | Movie review
Christine | Movie review