User Reviews

When a bus load of tourists from all walks of life runs out of gas in the middle of an apparently endless desert the set slowly gets staged not for a tale about survival via leaving the bus and searching for help, but of staging an improv version of "King Lear" that somehow manages to insinuate itself into the characters. While events predictably turn tragic for many if not all and the situation devolves into near-complete hopelessness (made the more intense by the use of digital video which creates a hell out of sunlight and sand), there is a sense of elements left untold and aspects left unexplored in THE KING IS ALIVE, leaving a bare-essentials character study which eventually semi-collapses in on itself.

An interesting experiment of a film with great improvised performances by Jennifer Jason Leigh, Janet McTeer, Bruce Davidson, and Romaine Bohringer, and one that perhaps with subsequent viewings could evolve within itself like many "experimental" films tend to do, but that at this moment remains a little too outré for the usual film-goer.

The movie is being televised as I write.

I simply forgot how horrible an experience I had watching it in the cinema.

The whole idea of the movie is flawed. The fact that intelligent Europeans and Americans stranded in the desert forget all concept of morals and civilization within a couple of days is laughable. The madness of Lord of the flies was longer in the making.

Details that annoy are plenty. One is the single African god-like character that mysteriously survives the horrible climate and have done so for ages without losing his mind and he seems to have no supply-problems either. Ridiculous. So too is the rescue attempt from the tour guide, an Indiana Jones look-alike, whose rescue attempt ends in tragedy and death a 5 minute walk from the hut. Then there's the choice of Lear, imposed onto the group by a guru-like joke of an artist. He reminded me of my hippie high school art teacher.

The worst thing though is Levrings choice of Lear. Obviously is an intellectual brain-fart. How that ever was going to be an pass-time is never clear to me.

Positives are few and far between. It's a beautiful movie, but that's never important.

High school intellectualism. Weird for the sake of weird. It's a complete waste of time unless you like thrashing useless art movies.

A ragtag collection of Western tourists in Africa suffer the misfortune of their plane breaking down, so they're compelled to hop on a bus to travel across the Namibian desert to reach the nearest jumping-off point back to civilization. Not surprisingly, the driver's compass ends up not working, and they find themselves way off course, coming to a stop at a deserted ghost-town that had been a barracks during the fighting in WWII. They find some kerosene (useless in terms of re-filling the tank of their bus), a storage room full of half-poisoned carrots in tin cans, and a native hermit who views them with indifference. The one fellow amongst them who appears to have something on the ball in terms of survivalist techniques goes off to get help. They are to remove the tires from the bus and burn them if he's not back in five days: hopefully, someone will see the black smoke.

Does this sound interesting? Well, sure, even if it sounds a lot like *The Flight of the Phoenix* or any number of films in the "deserted island" genre. Which is why it's surprising that *The King Is Alive* is Number 4 (if anyone is still counting) in the ongoing "Dogma 95" series, which, if I remember that ridiculous "Dogma 95 Vow of Chastity" correctly, proclaimed that "genre films" are strictly verboten. Oops. Well, anyway, you can tell it's gonna try and be all arty and stuff in order to compensate for the fact that it's a genre flick. Yep, it doesn't take long for one member of the group, a wizened old stage actor, to start scribbling down -- from memory! -- the various roles from *King Lear* on, well, rolls of paper. The idea is that performing the play will help while away the time. All of which really goes against the absconded survivalist's advice to stay optimistic (didn't the old actor ever do a dinner-theater performance of *The Odd Couple* just once in his life?), quite apart from such an activity being a colossal waste of precious time and energy.

This movie is so bad I really don't know how to continue. It's so monumentally stupid, so full of absurd situations and characters that it beggars rational criticism. It may be a timely moment to offer Full Disclosure: I despise this so-called Danish film "movement" to an almost irrational degree. I think my face even turns slightly red at the mere mention of Dogma 95. First of all, if the name of your movement has the word "dogma" in the title, you've already lost me; secondly, in this particular instance, the movement's insistence on the abnegation of individual artistic achievement is a recipe for arch hypocrisy when you consider that the filmmakers here are plundering one of the greatest works of the greatest INDIVIDUAL writer who ever lived. (But, doubtless, the Dogma crowd believes the Works of Shakespeare were actually penned by a consortium of Elizabethan bigwigs like the Earl of Oxford, Francis Bacon, Walter Raleigh, and the Queen Herself.)

Hell, I may have forgiven the whole enterprise if it had played the scenario for farcical purposes (attacking the precious Dogma -- now THAT would be subversive!). But the movie takes itself very seriously, and soon devolves into the clichés attendant upon the genre in which it unmistakably belongs: people turning against each other; the men growing beards; the inevitable deaths of a few of the principal actors. All with a straight face. "Is this the promised end?" Well, not quite: we also have to endure the abysmal transfer of DV. For this is another Rule in the Dogma 95 Vow of Chastity: hand-held digital video only. Some friendly advice to the Danes: your "movement" is in trouble when your finished product has worse visual quality than an average high-school graduation home video. Professionalism belongs in an artist's bag of tricks, right alongside his own individuality. "Artisan" and "artist" are kindred words, Mr. von Trier: not every jackass with a $100 hand-held can be a filmmaker. Pass it on. And by the way: allow your Dogma directors to be credited for their films, while you're at it. The fact that the writer of *The King Is Alive* receives credit, while the guy (or girl) actually filming it doesn't, is just a wee bit hypocritical.

Contemptible. 1 star out of 10.

No, it's not the worst movie I've ever seen. That honor still goes to a dreadful piece about Van Gogh materializing in present-day L.A. (Nothing I see will ever be as bad as that film.) But this is right up there in the Stinkeroo Hall of Fame.

POSSIBLE SPOILER

OK, we're not supposed to take the story literally? So it doesn't matter that they stand out in the desert sun learning lines, instead of taking all the necessary precautions to fight for survival? Fine. Except that the film doesn't work as some artistic metaphor on the human condition either.

There is no consistent, logical relationship among the film characters themselves, or between each person and the part they're assigned to play. There's no there there.

We may despise mindless action films, or predictably plotted suspense/fantasy films. But there is truly nothing worse than the person who hides an inability to create coherent themes and logical stories behind the aura of experimental art.