Bernal a Royal Talent Worth Savoring

Gael García Bernal is a force of nature. Like a young Brando or DeNiro, this chameleon-like actor is able to command the screen simply seated at a bar stool smoking a cigarette. From “Y tu mamá también” to “The Motorcycle Diaries” to “Bad Education” he’s delivered impressively impassioned scene-stealing performances each and every time, morphing from love-struck teen to humanistic revolutionary to femme fatale transvestite prostitute with the greatest of ease.

Now comes “The King,” a 2005 Sundance Film Festival entry that divided critics and audiences alike on either side of a very great divide. A love-it-or-hate-it masterpiece or monstrosity (depending on your point of view), this darkly comic Texas gothic horror melodrama is absolutely assured of shocking viewers senseless at least once as it makes its merrily twisted way to the finish line. Pushing boundaries and buttons, director James Marsh’s latest is as surreal and surprising as a movie could ever hope to get. While I can’t say I was with the film beginning to end it certainly kept my attention riveted to the screen, not exactly a trait in great cinematic supply in recent years.

A great deal of the credit must go to Bernal. Playing a young naval seaman named Elvis fresh out of the military the actor inhabits the character body and soul. He’s a saint. He’s a sinner. He works hard each and every day and does things the right way each and every time. He’s also prideful and easily hurt, prone to dangerous outbursts of violence difficult to anticipate. This is a startlingly alive and complicated performance, Bernal totally unafraid to dive into every unsavory and unsympathetic trait Elvis tragically possesses.

How unsympathetic? The youngster travels to Texas to meet the father he’s never known, the man’s name whispered reverentially to him by a mother whom he said goodbye to far too soon. That man is Pastor David Sandow (William Hurt), a religious conservative running one of those newfangled churches where the sermon is delivered more like a rock concert than as a didactic lecture. Sandow wants nothing to do with Elvis, coldly dismissing him as a mistake made during a misspent youth before he’d found God.

This doesn’t go over well with the former soldier. For reasons entirely his own he decides to take up with the man’s 16-year-old daughter Malerie (Pell James), taking her out cruising in his white Charger and spending long hours with her staring at a starry sky. In his own, misdirected way Elvis even falls in love with the virginal debutant, not seeing anything wrong when their relationship heads to a whole new level of intimacy.

But Elvis isn’t just having sex with his half-sister. A flash of violence has unintended consequences resulting in the disappearance of the family’s college-bound son Paul (Paul Dano). With their lives falling to pieces, Sandow decides this is the opportune time to come to grips with his past and to welcome his illegitimate son into his family’s life. Now Elvis is living in their house, eating their food and spending his nights sneaking into Malerie’s bedroom. But what happens when the bubble bursts and all the myriad secrets come boiling to the surface? Will Elvis allow for the disintegration of his own personal American Dream?

Marsh’s twisted melodrama is not for the faint of heart. This movie is as pitch black and as cynically grotesque as any I’ve seen in ages. The filmmaker bares his picture’s teeth right at the start and then refuses to shy away from the bloody damage they inflict when they bite down. Yet there is a strange optimism to the carnage, an unwavering belief that anything and everything can be forgiven no matter how terrible the sin.

That’s not true, of course, and the problem is I’m not sure Marsh and co-writer Milo Addica realize it. Not that it is especially important if they do, but when you consider the depth of the macabre pit in which Elvis descends it might be nice if they did, if only just a teensy weensy minute ever-so-little bit. I’m able to handle a lot, not exactly a squeamish blonde bimbo sitting at home doing her nails and fainting at the first sight of a paper cut, but what happens in “The King” might be too much even for me.

Thankfully, whenever I thought the filmmakers were going to go too far over the line Bernal was there to brings things back to order. This guy is the real deal, an actor able to make even the most hackneyed moment seem genuine and real. Put him in a one-on-one scene with Hurt and you’ve got magic, both men playing in melodious symmetry with the other to create sequences that are hands down mesmerizing. If “The King” is all over the place melodrama wise, it’s altogether dead certain of itself in regards to the actors, Bernal taking charge and proving to be a royal talent worthy of acclimation.