King of the Belgians: New film puts monarch in precarious situation

Last September, when Peter Van den Begin was walking the streets of Venice, passers-by would exclaim: “It’s the king, it’s the king!”

The easy-going Flemish actor was a little embarrassed by the attention. But he’d better get used to it.

Besides starring in King of the Belgians, which premiered to a 20-minute standing ovation by 1,400 cinema-goers at the Venice Film Festival, he played the lead in this year’s Everybody Happy and stars in next month’s Dode hoek (Blind Spot). That last one is about an Antwerp police commissioner who turns to the radical right and decides to enter politics.

“So it’s pretty much got its finger on the pulse of society right now,” Van den Begin (pictured) tells me. As does King of the Belgians, though it wasn’t really meant to.

Cosmic incident

The film, which opens this week in Belgium, follows a week in the life of a fictional Belgian king as he struggles to make it home from Turkey during a “cosmic incident” in which solar storms have curtailed flights and disabled all communications systems. Returning is urgent, however, as Wallonia has seceded from the Belgian state.

Travelling by broken-down ambulance, bus, tractor and, finally, a dangerously small boat, the king and his multi-lingual crew of advisors and PR personnel learn much about Europe – and about each other – on a journey that takes them across the Balkans.

“When we were shooting the movie, there was no Brexit, there was no Trump, and the refugee crisis hadn’t really started in Brussels,” Van den Begin says. “So the reality has followed. It feels strange to see the film in this context now.”

When he finally saw the movie in its entirety, he says, he realised that “the directors were real visionaries”.

Pulled from the headlines

Ghent-based directors Jessica Woodworth and Peter Brosens do indeed make films that record cataclysmic events, the situations that lead up to them, and the human response that follows. Khadak is about the eradication of traditional nomadism in Mongolia, while Altiplano pits Peruvian villagers against the mining industry as a toxic spill poisons the local water supply.

Their last film, 2012’s La cinquième saison (The Fifth Season), shows how residents of a small town in Wallonia react when spring never arrives, plunging them into perpetual winter.

And it was an environmental incident that led to King of the Belgians as well: the eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull in 2010, which caused much of Europe’s air travel to grind to a halt. “In 2010, there was a convergence of several events,” says Woodworth. “There was a long-term political crisis in Belgium – remember when we had no government? – and then the Icelandic volcano, which caused many people to be stuck where they were.”

Woodworth, an American, and Brosens, her Flemish partner in filmmaking and in life, saw a story in The New York Times about the Estonian president, who was stuck in Istanbul after the volcanic eruption. “He was forced to buy a minibus and traverse Europe, like in the days of old. He drove through the Balkans, and there was a photo of him, like, pumping gas. The whole thing was funny and charming and kind of nostalgic.”

Woodworth and Brosens do not make movies that could, by any stretch of the imagination, be called funny, charming or nostalgic. But they have now. King of the Belgians is in fact a comedy, shot in mockumentary style.

As the king and his entourage make their way westward towards Belgium, they are accompanied by a British documentary filmmaker – who thought the assignment to make the Belgian king look good on a trip to Turkey was going to be dull. The audience sees the action through this filmmaker’s camera.

‘Loaded with politics’

“We had no idea if we really had a comedy until we sat in Venice with an audience of 1,400 people,” says Woodworth. “And the laughter started, and they broke into applause three times during the film. They know our films very well in Venice, and no one expected us to deliver anything light or funny.” She laughs. “I think they were pleasantly surprised.”

Although the film is “loaded with politics, it’s not a political film,” she insists. They chose Wallonia to declare independence rather than Flanders for that very reason. “In reversing that political situation, we establish right away that we’re in the world of fiction. If it had been any kind of reflection of reality, it would have added a darker tone to the story.”

What they were really keen to do, she continues, “was look at this lonely figure who was born trapped. He has had no chance to determine his own destiny, and we find that really fascinating. A president is different, that’s a choice. But a king; they are born unfree.”

So, similar to their previous films, they introduce a crisis situation that works to alter one’s behaviour, which, says Woodworth, “is always transformed by circumstances. Protocol dissolves very quickly. What a fine moment for a man of this stature, to be confronted with something really challenging that would force him to wake up.”

A special year

It’s a transformative role for Van den Begin as well, who should see an international breakthrough with this film. One of Flanders’ greatest character actors, he’s finally getting the lead dramatic roles that have previously eluded him.

“It was a special year,” he admits. “I was so happy to do something different than was expected of me, and these are all really actor’s roles. They are like food and drink to an actor”.

King Nicolas, he says, was not based on Belgium’s real-life King Filip, nor on any other king. Though he did watch footage of Belgian kings to see how they carried themselves. Then he went off to the coast by himself to get into character.

“I wanted to be on my own,” he says. “I walked a lot along the coast to search for a kind of loneliness. How he’s trapped in protocol, what it does to him physically. It was intense. And then we shot the film chronologically, so I really had the opportunity to get into the character.”

Ironically, the actor experienced shooting on location in Bulgaria much like King Nicolas does. “I have never partied and danced so much in my life!” he laughs. “I really enjoyed life. Just like the king.”

He also discovered a part of himself he’d never dared visit before. “My father actually died in Bulgaria when he was there on holiday 25 years ago. He had been there a few times with my mother. He always said he liked it because the people were so nice, and it was so beautiful. And now I get this role to play the king travelling through Bulgaria. I felt a sense of melancholy sometimes, as if he was there with me. He lived the last days of his life here, where I was for the very first time. And that actually helped me to play this character.”

We should be so lucky if all our leaders were subject to such transformative experiences. “I don’t know what a small film about the king of the Belgians can do in terms of a hopeful discourse,” says Woodworth, “but it does have its place because we are all concerned. Decisions that are made in the near future are going to define the new age. If people in power actually look around and pay very close attention to ordinary people, then there’s hope for some sort of harmony, some sort of unity. It’s totally possible.”

Review: King of the Belgians

Belgian King Nicolas III is in Istanbul officially welcoming Turkey into the European Union. He is simultaneously the subject of a documentary shot by British filmmaker Duncan Lloyd (Pieter van der Houwen), hired by the queen to try to prop up the image of her quiet, dull husband. Try to show “his smiles,” she tells a bemused Duncan.

In the meantime, Nicolas’ every word is carefully formulated by members of his entourage, and if it doesn’t come out quite right, they have to shoot it again. But the clearly unhappy Nicolas is used to that.

The king’s every word has always been scripted. He was born into a life run by the oft-mentioned “protocol”, which has turned him into a kind of robot, with no idea what he actually thinks or feels anymore.

When word comes down that the Walloon region has declared independence, Nicolas and his people must return home at once. But a solar storm has not only grounded flights, it has disrupted all communications systems.

There’s only one thing to do: Drive home across the Balkans.

It’s the set-up for a royal road movie that could have come off like broad comedy, especially as the king is played by Peter Van den Begin, not unknown to the genre. But in the careful, measured hands of directors Jessica Woodworth and Peter Brosens (The Fifth Season), it becomes so much more.

From a daring escape with a group of Bulgarian folk singers to a broken-down vehicle in the middle of nowhere to drinking contests with snipers, Nicolas begins to come alive. In a place where no one knows who he is, he’s finally figuring it out himself. Right down to – in one hilarious scene – winning an argument about who is going to drive.

Under the gaze of Duncan’s camera, the king becomes as endearing as any great movie hero. He’s an ordinary man with an extraordinary job, on his way home to save a country.

King of the Belgians, in cinemas now, in English, Dutch, French and Bulgarian