THE KING IS ALIVE []
“Dogme” film about stranded travelers who perform “King Lear.” Running time: 118 minutes. Rated R (language, sexual situations). At the Lincoln Plaza, the Quad, the Park & 86th Street, and the Chelsea.
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IN Kristian Levring’s pretentious but oddly gripping and often visually striking film “The King Is Alive,” a busload of obnoxious Western travelers strays hundreds of miles off the road into an empty African desert, thanks to a hapless driver’s (Vusi Kunene) faith in a broken compass.
After the bus runs out of gas and strands its passengers in an abandoned mining town, Jack (Miles Anderson), the only person on the bus with any experience in desert survival, goes off to find help.
The rest of them bivouac in sand-strewn cabins, surviving on water collected at night and a dwindling supply of canned carrots. All the time they are watched silently by an elderly African.
The 10 passengers include a thuggish working-class Englishman (Bruce Davison), his mousy wife (Lia Williams) and his father (David Bradley) who, being white, upper middle-class and older, is bound by Scandinavian rules of political correctness to be the villain of the piece.
There’s an unhappily married middle-aged American couple (Janet McTeer and Chris Walker), an arrogant Frenchwoman, and a Southern alcoholic (the late Brion James who played Leon in “Blade Runner”).
As boredom and fear begin to take their toll on the group, a passenger who was once an actor (David Calder) is struck by the way adversity is stripping bare the human frailty of his fellow travelers.
He decides – and it’s a hard conceit to swallow – that it would be a good idea if everyone learned and performed Shakespeare’s “King Lear,” which he happens to know.
The part of Cordelia is taken by a young miniskirted American passenger (Jennifer Jason Leigh, slightly less mannered than usual). Though none too bright, she’s so keen to play the role she agrees to sleep with the only passenger who refused to join the cast. (It wouldn’t be a Jennifer Jason Leigh movie if her character weren’t raped, killed or at least degraded)
What happens next is predictable (adultery, murder, suicide) and full of leaden ironies, but at the same time strangely gripping. As in “King Lear” itself, the women are stronger than the men, most of whom come apart one way or another.
The performances Levring gets from his international cast are almost strong enough to distract you from his failure to develop any of the grand themes so self-consciously set-up by the choice of “King Lear.”
But then, Danish films made according to the ridiculous, half-joking “Dogme 95” vow of austerity, have a general tendency to pretentiousness, and “The King Is Alive” is certainly no exception, in terms of both style (lots of gimmicky quick-cuts) and content.