Some might say that the timing of the launch of King Charles’s documentary was unfortunate. Here is a serious film with a serious message — a heartfelt plea from Charles for humanity to mend its broken relationship with nature and save the planet. Yet it landed in the same week that the Epstein files belched out a photograph of his buffoonish brother Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor barefoot and on all fours over a prone young woman. It might have been done in jest, but it made him look like a creepy uncle and reportedly got him booted out of Royal Lodge earlier than planned and “under the cover of darkness”.
This was bad. But also in the news we read that one of the UK’s worst illegal waste tips, in Bickershaw, Wigan, is on land partially owned by… well, this is awkward… the Duchy of Lancaster, the King’s private estate. So, yes, the timing of a film about the environment could have been happier.
But could these tawdry Epstein revelations help Charles? They do at least underscore in neon lights the canyon-sized difference between him and Andrew. Although brothers, they are like chalk and cheese, organic soil tiller versus playboy vulgarian, homme sérieux versus clown-shoed dimwit.
Charles worries about nature, Andrew worries about himself. Could you imagine Andrew cooing to his chickens, and keeping them in a coop called Cluckingham Palace, as Charles does? Could you imagine him standing in a field looking mildly heartbroken that he doesn’t hear cuckoos and grasshoppers any more, as we see Charles doing? Given the allegations, one imagines the only birds for whom Andrew would be scanning the horizon would be ones wearing skinny jeans and fake smiles.
Anyway, after watching Finding Harmony: A King’s Vision you are left in no doubt of the utter sincerity of Charles’s concern for nature and our disconnect from it. We are a part of nature, not apart from it, is the mantra.
Charles presents as something of a Cassandra figure. He has been warning the world about the environment, pesticides, global warming and so on for decades, but originally people dismissed him as a batty, bumbling eccentric or a pseudo hippy, especially in the 1980s when he admitted that he talked to his plants.
• King Charles: I must help the planet before I die
“A-loon with his worms” read one headline shown in the film. Another newspaper wrote, “The Prince of Wales is going completely off his trolley.” We see him sitting alone on a red velvet chair before a large screen watching his own film, his own life, these headlines looming into view.
The narrator Kate Winslet tells us that what was once considered “crazy now seems like common sense”. It seems to give Charles little satisfaction to have been right. He is frustrated that things have moved so slowly and with such little sense of urgency. “I can only do what I can do, which is not very much. Aaah, anyway…” he sighs, wistfully.
Charles at Highgrove House in 1986
TIM GRAHAM PHOTO LIBRARY/GETTY IMAGES
Still, at least we learn that he finds the “Duke of York” useful for something — namely, baked potatoes. Alas, Charles wasn’t talking about his brother’s culinary skills, or about Andrew and his former title at all. He was referring to red Duke of York potatoes, which he said were ideal for making nice, crispy skins. Then he gave a little snigger. Was this all deliberate mischief-making? A not-so-coded dig? Maybe it was all perfectly innocent, but I would like to think not.
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The repetition of the word “harmony” begins to sound a little cultish and some might see irony in the programme being on Prime Video, thus linked to Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame, whose enthusiastic use of packaging has been a customer beef. But it is a decent, gentle film that Charles surely intended to be his historical document, a flag in the sand to say, “Look, this is what I am about,” to showcase his gravitas.
I do feel a little sorry for him that Andrew’s Epstein-related escapades have stolen the headlines and the thunder, especially since it is so important to Charles that that the film was given the first premiere to be held at a royal residence, namely Windsor Castle. So, in summary, nice film… shame about the brother.
★★★☆☆
Prime Video
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