The King Is Alive (2000) - Levring's trying desert theatrics

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Dunes of desert landscape and lone figures walking there make up this sparse poster for Kristian Levring's The King Is Alive

A busload of Western tourists get stranded in Africa's Namibian desert after having driven incredible long - but in the wrong direction. They spend their time while waiting for rescue on acting out Shakespeare's King Lear.

The King Is Alive is written by Anders Thomas Jensen (Red Road (2006)) and co-writer/director Kristian Levring (Et Skud fra Hjertet (1986)), and it is the 4th film done following the Dogme95 manifesto, which limits filmmaking techniques and effects to a radical, sometimes lifelike sparseness in method and style.
The film seems bent on exhibiting the hypocrisy, hysteria and incompetence of regular Westerners, - there may be more sins in play than these I am sure, - because, of course, the masks of civilization inevitable come to crumble and fall in the meeting with the brutal, uncaring desert.
But even though The King Is Alive is well cast and well acted and seems to have the makings of something potentially great in it, it is both written and directed with too unsure hands as to what it is it expresses. The fact that all of the characters are rather distasteful doesn't make the slow-moving drama any more exciting. The King Is Alive is finally more special than good.

Related post:

Kristian Levring: The Salvation (2014) - Classic western yarn meets Danish dynamite

Watch a 23-minute video here of Levring and executive producer Vibeke Windeløv talking about the making of the film here - with English subtitles

Cost: Unknown
Box office: Uncertain, but in excess of 156k $
= Uncertain - but almost certainly a box office disaster
[The King Is Alive premiered 11 May (Cannes Film Festival, out of competition) and runs 109 minutes. 10 companies, representing 6 nations, were involved in this co-production. Shooting took place in Namibia. The film sold only 13,248 tickets in main production country Denmark, coming to approximately 139k $. In North America the film grossed 17k $ in its first week of release in 6 theaters. No other release details are released, but figuring that the film was made on a low 2 mil. $ budget, it looks like a box office disaster. It won 1/2 Robert award nominations (Denmark's Oscar). Roger Ebert gave it a 3/4 star review, translating to 2 notches higher than this one. Levring returned with D-Dag - Den Færdige Film (2001, TV movie, segment) and theatrically with The Intended (2002). Miles Anderson (The Musketeers (2015, TV-series)) returned in 10 TV credits prior to his theatrical return in The Silent Fall (2007). The King Is Alive is fresh at 60 % with a 5.96/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The King Is Alive?

The Salvation (2014) - Classic western yarn meets Danish dynamite

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'Bad Men Will Bleed' is the tagline of the poster for Kristian Levring's The Salvation

Besides some rather ridiculous earlier attempts, the so-called 'potato westerns', Denmark has never made a real western. - Until now.

Danish post-1864 Denmark/Germany war US settler Jon and his brother Peter are finally met by Jon's beautiful, Danish wife and son after 7 years on different continents. But tragedy immediately strikes in the new, dangerous world, and Jon's revenge is swift. But there follows a bloodshed, which forces him to get more entangled in the small town, ripe with cowardice and bubbling oil ...

The solid script and direction is by Kristian Levring (The King Is Alive (2000)) and co-writer Anders Thomas Jensen (The Green Butchers (2003)). The America that is presented here is a uniformly tough place, where greed, cruelty and self-regard reigns, in-line with Danish master filmmaker Lars Von Trier's notoriously America-critical Dogville (2003), (not to speak of follow-up Manderlay (2005) and his musical Dancer in the Dark (2000)), and in this strict focus The Salvation loses a central color of the western, that of the good American. But this is truly an outsider western, more accurately a Euro-western shot in South Africa! It is like a spaghetti western-inspired horse opera, shot digitally and stylistically infused with Sin City (2005) affinity.
Salvation is visually impressive, with cool cinematography by Jens Schlosser (The One and Only/Den Eneste Ene (1999)). From the dusty railroad beginning and the following, exciting stage coach scenes, we see classic, well-made western settings. And later the cindered town of the film's gang leader tyrant Delarue is brought to good use as an atmospheric setting more than once. The style is that of a digitally heightened reality, fresh, sharp, simple and handsomely achieved.
Complicating the story, - and making for a richer experience, - are some rich secondary characters; Delarue's mute woman played intensely by Eva Green (White Bird in a Blizzard (2014)); Jon's sympathetic, helpful brother Peter played by Mikael Persbrandt (In a Better World (2010)), who seems to be a bit preoccupied with getting his Swedish tongue to sound alternately Danish and Danish-American; and the town's 'yellow' mayor/undertaker, played beautifully by Jonathan Pryce (Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)). The Salvation's exciting cast also includes former Manchester United soccer star Eric Cantona as our heavy's right hand man, and Danish popstar Nanna Øland Fabricius, - better known as Oh Land, - who plays Jon's ill-fated wife. Lastly, Jeffrey Dean Morgan (The Possession (2012)) is good as the self-righteous Delarue. - He liked the movie so much, he's had a tattoo made on his arm of his character's favorite weapon in it!
I sort-of understand, because Salvation is a solid good western. The tale is arch-typical and has been done before, yet it still it seems fresh; the Danish settler angle and music (by Kasper Winding (Me and Charly/Mig og Charly (1978)) is different, as is some of the visuals. Though it's shot in South Africa, it looks like the American West. The production is good, and the pacing modern yet graceful.
If you are a western-lover, this may very well be your favorite movie this year, however unlikely, it is a Danish western. Rough, violent, with some dark humor and a strong hero in Mads Mikkelsen's (The Hunt (2012)) Jon, who tries to avoid conflict for as long as he can, and is different than any American western hero I can recall, if only because of his look and heritage.
SPOILER The title seems to refer to Mikkelsen and Green's outsider renegade characters finding each other and forging a new alliance in their young adopted country (America), which the ending implies will strengthen its people's moral hollowness in extreme wealth (arriving in the form of oil.) - Go see this one!

Mads Mikkelsen as Jon in Kristian Levring's The Salvation

Mads Mikkelsen, co-writer/director Kristian Levring and Eva Green on the set of The Salvation

Budget: 10.5 mil. euros
Box office: Not known yet
= Still unknown

What do you think of The Salvation?
Any recent western/s that you want to recommend?