Characters whose motivations are opaque
undermine a provocative film about a Navy vet who goes searching for his
biological father but winds up sleeping with his underage half-sister.
The charismatic Gael García Bernal has, by starring in four
popular Spanish-language films (Y Tu Mamá También, The Motorcycle
Diaries, Amores Perros, and El Crimen del Padre Amaro),
became about as well known a star as you can become in this country without
speaking English. But he does speak English, and pretty well, in James Marsh’s The
King. Saddled with that most iconic of norteamericano names, Elvis,
he plays a Navy veteran who goes right to Corpus Christi upon his discharge,
and, pausing only to engage the services of a hooker, a used-auto dealer, and a
motel clerk, heads over to see his dad (William Hurt), the popular pastor of a
modern yet conservative local church. The product of the pastor’s pre-Christian
youth, Elvis has never met his dad. However, given a cool reception from the
pastor, he instead immediately focuses his attention on his sixteen-year-old
half sister (Pell James), who doesn’t know who he is.
Marsh is a documentary
filmmaker whose credits include something called The Burger & the King:
The Life and Death of Elvis Presley, and nothing else really explains why
his main character is called Elvis and the movie titled as it is. There’s a lot
unexplained here, in a movie almost entirely without subtext. We know almost
nothing of Elvis’s past. Why is he so instantly smitten with his relative, who
is underage and not beautiful? She seems even more of a blank slate. If she has
a rebellious streak, it’s not apparent. What, besides his obvious good looks,
makes her willing to start a relationship she must hide? The viewer may form
ideas about these questions, but I believe they will be mere guesses. The
King held my curiosity as any movie with a secret (and not just the one
I’ve identified) at the center is apt to do. The way the family (including the
pastor’s wife and son) reacts to the stranger is surprising. I thought from the
early scenes that the family’s seemingly simple religiosity would be the target
of satire. But in fact only Hurt’s supporting character takes on any sort of
complexity. He’s the only one you feel like you understand more at the end of
the movie than the beginning.
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