King Charles has revealed he “wasn’t going to be diverted” from his environmental campaigning despite criticism in the past in a new documentary showcasing his philosophy of “Harmony”.
In the Amazon Prime Video film, his first project with a streaming platform, Charles recalls past attacks on his outspokenness on the environment, saying: “I just felt this was the approach that I was going to stick to. A course I set and I wasn’t going to be diverted from.”
He hopes Finding Harmony: A King’s Vision, filmed over seven months in four continents and exploring the importance of living in balance with nature, will act as a call to action after five decades of his campaigning on the climate crisis.
“On the fight to save the planet: it’s rapidly going backwards. I’ve said that for the last 40 years but anyway, there we are. So, that’s why I get a bit, anyway … I can only do what I can do, which is not very much,” he says in the film, which is available on Amazon Prime from 6 February.
He concludes: “Maybe, by the time I shuffle off this mortal coil, there might be a little more awareness … of the need to bring things back together again.”
The global premiere of the film in the Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle on Wednesday evening is thought to be the first time a film will have premiered at a royal residence.
It captures five decades of Charles’s environmental missionary zeal, and while not capital P political, it is an unprecedented project for a British sovereign, although not for Charles as Prince of Wales. Summing up its message, the king says in the film: “It all boils down to the fact that we are nature ourselves. We are a part of it, not apart from it.”
The film, narrated by actor Kate Winslet, reveals the 1986 documentary which disclosed that Charles talked to plants, had “haunted him ever since”. He was “really upset” by the ensuing criticism, Ian Skelly, co-author of the king’s 2010 Harmony book, says.
Charles is seen collecting eggs from “Cluckingham Palace” – his hen house for rare breed hens at Highgrove, the Gloucestershire home he has turned into a test bed for his radical ideas about “Harmony”.
When he first announced his plan for organic farming at Home Farm, Highgrove, he says, “all this was considered completely bonkers, to say the least”.
He laments: “When I first came 45 years ago … I mean, I used to hear cuckoos, which you never hear a single cuckoo …. And there used to be grasshoppers and, you know, the place used to hum. And that wonderful sound, you don’t get much of that, even though I’ve done my utmost to, you know, make sure.”
The lavish production includes “Harmony”-inspired projects from beekeeping at HMP Bristol to the rainforests of Guyana, the deserts of Rajasthan, India, and Kabul in Afghanistan. The concepts of connectedness with nature, of “sacred geometry” and “natural mathematics”, are explored.
Produced in partnership with The King’s Foundation, the nature and sustainability charity based at Dumfries House in Scotland and founded by Charles in 1990 as Prince of Wales, the film presents an unchallenged view of the philosophy. It will be available in 240 countries and territories.
A spokesperson for the king said it was not a “conventional royal documentary” but a “deeply personal exploration of ideas that have shaped his majesty’s life and work: the interconnectedness of all things, the wisdom of traditional knowledges, and the belief that we can build a future that works in partnership with nature rather than against it”.
A cast of stars joined the king and queen at the film’s Windsor Castle premiere on Wednesday evening.
Actors including Kate Winslet, Benedict Cumberbatch, Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench and Stanley Tucci were among 222 guests, as well as musicians Rod Stewart and Jools Holland. The Duchess of Edinburgh and the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester were also in the audience.
