R E V I E W S
King Is Alive, The (2001)
Starring: Miles
Anderson, Romane Bohringer, David Bradley, David Calder Studio: IFC Films Review Posted: 6.22.01 Rating: 2.5/4
By Sara M. Fetters.
"Desert
Tale of Survival Alive if Not Kicking"
The
idea of being stranded; whether on a deserted island, a tropical
jungle or the middle of the desert; and the desperate fight for
survival and rescue has been a staple of fiction for centuries.
Homer, Shakespeare, Dafoe all have had their own literary takes
on the subject, while Truffaut, Huston and countless others have
given audiences their own cinematic interpretations on the
theme. Most recently, Survivor-mania
has taken over television sets around the world and Tom Hanks
made friends with a volleyball in the box office smash Cast
Away.
While
the avenues on which these works travel is disparate, the
central theme remains the same: the retention of humanity. The
constant desire to return home tempered by the need to keep some
semblance of one’s humanity in a completely isolated society
or setting drives all of these stories and it is the road
traveled in Danish director Kristin Levring’s The
King is Alive.
The
set up is devastatingly simple: a bus load of European and
American travelers passing through the Namibian Desert is sent
hundreds of miles off course during the night due to a broken
compass. Out of gas, they come to a halt at an abandon mining
camp; a giant dustbin of crippled buildings and rusted out
garbage. With no radio and no cellular service, the only chance
for survival rests with one traveler making the five-day walk to
a local village. All the rest of this ragtag group can do is sit
and wait, pray for a rescue that may never come.
While waiting they set up a their own mini-society, a microcosm of life as they had always been used to it. There are some exceptions as new necessities force precise duties upon the group. Water must be continually collected and monitored, food stores – cases of canned carrots not all of which can be eaten – must be maintained and rationed, and a large fire must be raging at all times so as to alert potentially passing planes to human habitation.
To
pass the time and to help bring them together one member
proposes that they stage a sand soaked version of
Shakespeare’s King Lear
to pass the time until help arrives. Realizing the fragile state
of their newly minted civilization, he figures Lear’s
themes of isolation, abandonment and emotional cruelty can help
keep the group focused on their own survival and need to trust
one another. Instead, all it does is augment the fragile state
they’re in, acerbating the decline of their social structure
as infidelity, lust, fear, pain, suffering and isolation start
to clinch their hot grip upon the clan.
Only the fourth film to receive the Dogme 95 seal, Levring and co-writer Anders Thomas Jensen’s screenplay is always interesting if never subtle. The decline of this civilization is chilling at times; the pain and fear entrenched within the cast’s sweat-stained features filling the screen. Shot on digital video, there are some viscerally striking moments and the sun washed look of the feature is dreamy in an otherworldly sort of way.
Yet, The King is Alive never quite works the way the director intends. The societal decimation is already present before the group is even stranded. All of them are damaged and wounded by life and circumstance well before their bus goes off course. While I’m sure the idea was to show how isolation and desperation could augment these emotional scars, the descent happens so quickly that when tragedy strikes my emotional response was one more of indifference than involvement.
Then there is the use of King Lear as the movie’s central parallel for the group’s disintegration. While the metaphors between play and film are obvious and at times devastatingly effective, the idea that these people would be so reticent to put on a play of such pain and brutality is a bit murky. Why not comedies As You Like It or, even better considering it to is about a character washing ashore in a new land, Twelfth Night instead of the emotionally barbarous Lear? As strong as the pull to remain active would be, I find it hard to believe Lear would be the material of choice for people on the verge of emotional erosion.
It
is hard to talk too much about the cast and their work in the
film. The script makes it difficult to get a feel for any of the
characters their playing. It paints them all as “types” and
not enough as “people” leaving the actors to try and find
their character’s centers.
Granted, with Jennifer Jason Leigh, Janet McTeer, Bruce
Davison, Romane Bohringer, David Bradley and the late Brion
James there is some stunningly good work on display, but even
then the emotional gap between audience and film is too
difficult to breach.
One wants to praise The King is Alive for many reasons; it’s challenging, asks questions without easy answers, breaks new ground for digital filmmaking and is topically timely; yet I left the theater wanting so much more than it finally gave me. Levring is a promising and uncompromising talent, but The King is Alive only skirts the surface of its full potential.
|
