The King's Choice Trailer (2017)

Trailer for The King's Choice.

Classical cinema in the best sense of the phrase, Eric Poppe's perfectly realized period piece looks at a seminal moment in modern Norwegian history: the days in 1940 when King Haakon VII (Jesper Christensen, perhaps best known to North American audiences for playing the shadowy Mr. White in three recent Bond films) faced the momentous decision about whether or not to cooperate with the invading German army. Threatening to abdicate if the government chose cooperation, he advocated all-out resistance, placing himself and his family in great danger, and guaranteeing his place in the annals of Norwegian history.

Poppe, a regular fixture at the Palm Springs Film Festival and the only director to have won the Norwegian Film Critics' Award for Best Feature three times, started his career as a war photographer before moving on to cinematography, and his experience shows in the way he shoots both the action scenes and the tense, intimate moments when decisions that will affect thousands of lives are being made. He captures a story for the ages with clarity and impressive attention to detail.