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THE KING IS ALIVE |
| Kristian Levring's "The King is Alive"
"The King is Alive". Director: Kristian Levring. Cast: David Bradley, Janet McTeer, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Romane Bohringer, Bruce Davison, Miles Anderson, David Calder, Brion James, Peter Kubheka, Vosi Kunene. Denmark 2000. This is the fourth production to be made under the Dogme95 'vow of chasity' and so like "The Idiots", "Festen" and "Mifune" before it, it eschews special effects, genre driven plots, decent lighting and stable cameras in favour of a purer, charecter driven, style of cinema. It tells the story of a busload of tourists, including Henry (Bradley) a retired thespian, Gina (Jason Leigh) an American flake, Catherine (Bohringer) a French intellectual, and their some what inept driver who are stranded in an old mining shanty in the middle of the North African dessert, when their bus goes of course and runs out of petrol. As one of their number heads of for help the rest are left to survive in traditional Robinson Crusoe fashion, maintaining their sanity as much as their physical condition. The land-locked castaways collect dew for water, eat the canned carrots left behind by the mining company, fix up their shelters and rehearse a performance of 'King Lear' as transcribed from memory by Henry (as you do). Under the ever watchful eye of the shanty's sole inhabitant, an ancient Namibian sage like figure who passes simple judgment on what he sees, the group experience rejection, reunion, retribution and death as over-wrought emotions begin to bubble over from the play into their actions and interaction outside the play. Levring's film remain true to it's Shakespearian influences, as many of the plots and sub-plots from the bard's classic tragedy are played out in the relationships between the performers, at times coming dangerously close to melodrama as these inter-relationships begin to strain in what Henry refers to at one point as a 'fantastic striptease of basic human needs'. The tourists are a uniformly unlikeable bunch, flawed and pathetic examples of humanity, perhaps it is because some of these flaws touch too close to home that these characters are so unlikeable, and it is this that makes watching their fight for survival so compelling, either way their can be no doubt that they are the last people on Earth you would want to be marooned with. Henry is the only one that comes out even vaguely sympathetic as Bradley enthuses the character with a warmth and charm that he is perhaps undeserving. Jason Leigh puts in a suitably annoying performance as the ditzy Gina, while Bohringer imbues her opposite number Catherine with a coldly calculating repellence that leaves no room for sympathy. The shaky camera-work is a thing of beauty as it lovingly details the sumptuous desert backdrop with it red' oranges and yellows, it's rolling dunes, and glorious sun-rises. The dessert literally overwhelms it's pathetic inhabitants, as it should, giving the audience a supreme sense of place in this desolate wilderness. With it's unremitting darkness, it's uncomfortable dissection of human frailties and weaknesses, and it's suitably ambiguous ending, the film is by no stretch of the imagination entertaining, but it is compelling, which is perhaps more important. Levring's film teaches us a very valuable lesson that is important now more than ever, it teaches us the true value of petrol. This is a modern day Shakespearian tragedy, for those that are into that sort of thing. |