The King Is Alive
When four Danish directors decided to eschew the gimmicky filmmaking techniques of their Hollywood counterparts, beginning the Dogme '95 filmmaking movement, the idea was that less would lead to more.And while the resulting films — Thomas Vinterberg's blistering "The Celebration," Soren Kragh-Jacobsen's low-key "Mifune" and the weakest of the lot, Lars von Trier's scabrous "The Idiots" — may not have been to everyone's taste, at least they were refreshingly honest and offbeat.
However, as the first effort from the fourth member of the group, Kristian Levring's "The King Is Alive," finally sees the light of day, the movement already appears to be losing steam.
In the other films, the supposed lack of artifice — such as the jittery, in-your-face camera work (done on digital camera) — served its purpose, which was to focus your attention on the characters and the story. Here, however, it's something of a distraction, not that anything that diverts attention from the on-screen unpleasantness is completely unwelcome.
To be fair, Levring is attempting to pull off some pretty daunting material, as the story here is an odd cobbling of Shakespeare and TV's "Survivor," with even a little bit of "The Blair Witch Project" thrown in for good measure.
And while one member of the group volunteers to go for help, the others stay behind and try to keep up their spirits while performing such drudgery as digging latrines, draining morning dew to replenish their water supplies and eating canned carrots (which are possibly spoiled).
So one of them, Henry (David Calder), gets the idea to have them memorize and perform "King Lear." But it may already be too late, as petty jealousies threaten to tear them apart and jeopardize their already slim chances of survival.
If the purpose of the story is to get us to dislike the characters, then mission accomplished. Most of them are so irritating and unpleasant that it's hard to care about what's happening to them (particularly those played by Jennifer Jason Leigh and Janet McTeer, who help give the movie more of a "name" cast than its Dogme counterparts).
"The King Is Alive" is rated R for occasional strong profanity, simulated sex, crude sex talk and use of vulgar sexual slang terms, brief female nudity and brief violence (a brawl). Running time: 108 minutes.
E-MAIL: jeff@desnews.com