The King's Choice
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King Haakon VII (Jesper Christensen) and the Norwegian government meet while on the run in The King’s Choice
A few weekends ago I coincidentally watched two movies about kings and resolved to review both of them. The first was The Lost King, the story of how Richard III’s grave was found. Here, after a regrettable delay, is the second—The King’s Choice.
The Second World War in Europe began with Germany’s invasion of Poland in September 1939, but after this initial blaze of violence the war—at least from the Western perspective—settled into months and months of inactive “phoney war.” Britain and France were technically at war with Germany but there was little shooting. That changed dramatically in the spring of 1940.
After protracted diplomatic wangling, Germany invaded both Denmark and Norway on April 9. Infantry and armor attacks as well as history’s first paratrooper assaults overwhelmed the Danish border, and King Christian X chose to capitulate the same morning. But across the Skagerakk, the strait separating Denmark and Norway, his younger brother King Haakon VII reacted differently.
The King’s Choice (Kongens nei) tells Haakon’s story. Opening on the day before the invasion, when word of the sinking of a German ship in Norwegian waters arrives in Oslo, the film follows Haakon (Jesper Christensen) and Olav (Anders Baasmo Christiansen), his son and heir, and the German ambassador Curt Bräuer (Karl Markovics) as Germany launches its invasion and Norway scrambles to respond. Haakon faces difficult choices: Escape to Britain? Evacuate his family but remain behind himself, like his brother in Denmark, and face occupation? Capitulate, and head a German puppet government under the loathsome Vidkun Quisling? Haakon determines early on to resist, but faced with the overwhelming might of the German war machine, how much resistance is appropriate, for how long, and to what end? Simultaneously, Olav struggles to reconcile his duty as the Crown Prince with his strained devotion to his father. Both are burdened with choosing what is best for Norway.
Bräuer’s parallel struggle is especially interesting. An awkward choice as a diplomat, Bräuer speaks little Norwegian but admires Norway and its people and sincerely desires peace. He also believes, naively, that the conflict brewing up between Nazi Germany and Norway can be resolved by men of goodwill, and that if he can present moderate terms to Haakon personally, before it is too late, the war can be halted if not prevented. Where Haakon and Olav’s story is one of finding strength to face an enemy, Bräuer’s, tragically, is one of disillusion.
The film nicely balances these character studies with the events of the opening days of the invasion. As Bräuer’s diplomatic woes play out in the background, Haakon, Olav, the royal family, and the Norwegian parliament flee Oslo. They fall back repeatedly, working their way farther north and ever closer to the Swedish border with the Germans only a few hours behind them. Escape and exile beckon, and death is a constant danger. At one point, Haakon, Olav, and their families narrowly escape German bombing, and at another, only the dedication and bravery of the young reservists manning a roadblock hold back a German paratrooper assault as the royals and government escape to their next hiding place.
These sequences—and a truly brilliant early action scene depicting the defense of Oslofjord and the sinking of the German cruiser Blücher, which looms out of the nighttime murk like some primeval monster—are the only combat in the film. The King’s Choice is a film of hastily called nighttime conferences, ad hoc meetings, and breathless situation reports. But the filmmakers use the sparse action judiciously, punctuating the movements of Haakon, deepening the crisis surrounding Bräuer, and raising the stakes for both—and for the people of Norway. By the time Bräuer finally receives his audience with the king, the potential consequences of the king’s choice are abundantly clear.
It further helps that the central performances are so good. Jesper Christensen will probably be most familiar to viewers in the Anglosphere as Mr White of the Daniel Craig Bond films. He plays Haakon as a strong, principled man keenly aware of his own vulnerability and the longterm ramifications of his choices. His duties toward the people weigh on him—especially since, unlike his older brother, he was not born to the throne but chosen by the people—and as he nears seventy years old he struggles manfully to withstand the bodily pains worsened by the political pressures placed upon him. Repeated scenes in which he tries to stretch and ease his bad back provide a perfectly understated human note.
Markovics (who played the lead in The Counterfeiters, a powerful German film you should watch if you haven’t) offers an excellent counterpart as Bräuer, a principled man who is nonetheless deeply deceived about his position and the forces at play in the conflict. And Christiansen as Crown Prince Olav, who feels pulled in multiple directions by his loyalty to his father, his love of his family, and his duty to the people of Norway, brings both tension and respect to his relationship with Haakon, with past hurts and family troubles only further complicating the king’s position during the invasion.
I was only passingly familiar with the role played by Haakon and the Norwegian government in 1940, so I can’t say whether the film’s interpersonal dramas are accurate or even fair. I will note that both Haakon and Olav, regardless of their differences, real or imagined, are presented respectfully. But like a comparable British film, Darkest Hour, such drama heightens the action and offers a way for the viewer to grasp the personal and emotional stakes of the geopolitical maneuvering. I certainly intend to study Haakon and his family in more detail in the future.
The King’s Choice is a finely dramatized sliver of World War II history, one very often overlooked in the American memory of the war. Like all the best films about the war, it brings the viewer into the uncertainty of the moment and underscores the principled courage of leaders who withstood aggression and guided their people through the darkness. It is well worth seeking out.
More if you’re interested
Two other Norwegian war films that I’ve seen in recent years are Max Manus: Man of War and The 12th Man, both of which concern the Norwegian resistance. I reviewed each briefly on the blog here and here. Haakon briefly appears in the former. And as a good companion film to The King’s Choice I’d recommend 9. April, a Danish movie that follows a company of bicycle infantry from the last midnight hours before the German invasion to the King of Denmark’s capitulation later that day. I gave it a full review here and it is available in its entirety, at least for now, on YouTube here.
