It is difficult to describe the disappointment I felt when viewing this movie. Alfred is portrayed as a would-be monk who grudgingly takes on the mantle of king under persuasion from a Welsh bishop called Asser, here played by Colin Blakely. In reality, Asser did not come into Alfred's life until eight years after the Battle of Ethandun in 878, the climax of this movie. The real Alfred was a tough, pragmatic German from a hierarchical society and would have known all along that his likely destiny was to be king and the wrangle over his accepting the kingship is weak and manufactured. Similarly, by this time he was already married to Ealhswith and had at least two children and, in fact, wed her not in Wessex but in Mercia, a neighbouring kingdom. Moreover, she was never handed over to the Danes as a hostage. I hate to be a history bore here, but when a film opens with and runs on so many inaccuracies, it is difficult to take it seriously. The real story of Alfred is compelling and dramatic enough without mangling the history and embellishing it with impossibilities; and, by the by, the tale is ripe for telling by Hollywood or any British company with the gumption to tell it. Alfred was a far "greater" and more important historical figure than William Wallace ever was and is responsible for saving the Anglo-Saxons and English and ultimately the British state and culture from Danish rule. Without Alfred and his victory at Ethandun, there would have been no English state, no English language and no Norman Conquest; the world would have been a totally - totally - different place. Ethandun was a pivotal moment in world history.
There are other problems with this production, including the portrayal of the Danes as a uniformed army, which always rankled with me: they were no army, but violent adventurers on the rampage for money, treasures, women and slaves (for use or sale). They were simultaneously disorganised, ruthless and practical, and were not a state-made, organised army in uniform. Moreover, as in Braveheart, there is too much talk here of "freedom" and the rule of law. The law and freedom were never available to the likes of the peasantry portrayed here by, amongst others, Ian McKellen in his film debut. Alfred's laws, for instance, did not apply to the slaves kept by the Saxons, and justice in any real sense was only available to those with the money to buy it. So do not look to this film for a history lesson. The conflict is manufactured, the dialogue and themes weak and the history dispensed with. It is such a shame that such an excellent film could have been made from the material - ie from the life of King Alfred.
Despite the foregoing, I have rated the film as a five because it does give a fairly realistic sense of ninth century existence: the towns "walled" with wooden posts, the clothing, the hunting culture and the bleakness of an "England" with only a few hundred thousand inhabitants. The names, too, of the characters are drawn directly from that time: Cerdic (cherditch), Ethelraed, Burghred and the rest. Similarly the acting itself from first-rate actors is everything it should be - it's just that their dialogue and the story they are telling leave everything to be desired.
In a nutshell, look to this movie for its production values and material realism, not for its history or its script and plotting. For the latter, read a book.
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