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?

Lion (2016) - An incredible true story brought to vivid, touching life

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+ Best Australian Movie of the Year

The young, fresh-faced stars cut through by en evocative photo of a rail track and a search engine bar adorn this poster for Garth Davis' Lion

Saroo is just a small boy, when he in 1986 gets lost from his family in India and winds up in a place he doesn't know and later gets adopted from there to Australia.

Lion is written by Luke Davies (Life (2015)), based on real-life Saroo Brierley's 2013 autobiography about his life, A Long Way Home, and directed by debuting great Australian filmmaker Garth Davis (Top of the Lake (2013, TV-series).
The first approximately 50 minutes of the film, which follows Saroo as a boy, are enormously captivating. Sunny Pawar (Love Sonia (2018)) is formidable as Saroo, and his brother and mother are also played convincingly. The momentum dives shortly, as we jump forward in time to Saroo as an adult, but it is soon picked up again, thanks to Dev Patel's (Slumdog Millionaire (2008)) deep-felt, strong performance. Rooney Mara (The Social Network (2010)) gives fine support, and Nicole Kidman (The Others (2001)) makes a statuesque mother figure here, SPOILER even in the somewhat strange scenes, in which she confesses to have had a vision as a 12 year-old, which told her that she would be adopting a brown child.
The score by Volker Bertelmann (Hotel Mumbai (2018)) and Dustin O'Halloran (Equals (2015)) is fantastic and adds to the simple force that drives the film. Was all of this not a true story, Lion might have been rejected. But it is a true and amazing story: Lion beats the more successful and comparable Slumdog Millionaire in quality and is perhaps the year's most touching film.

Related post:

Garth Davis: 2016 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]

2016 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 12 mil. $
Box office: 140.3 mil. $
= Mega-hit (returned 11.69 times the cost)
[Lion premiered 10 September (Toronto International Film Festival, Ontario) and runs 118 minutes. Shooting took place in India and Australia from January - May 2015. The film opened #32 to a 123k $ first weekend in 4 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #9 and in 1,802 cinemas (different weeks) and grossed 51.7 mil. $ (36.8 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were Australia with 22.3 mil. $ (15.9 %) and the UK with 15.4 mil. $ (11 %). It became the 6th highest-grossing Australian film ever in Australia. The film was nominated for 6 Oscars: It lost Best Picture to Moonlight, Supporting Actor (Patel) to Mahershala Ali in Moonlight, Supporting Actress (Kidman) to Viola Davis in Fences, Adapted Screenplay to Barry Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney for Moonlight, Cinematography (Greig Fraser) to Linus Sandgren for La La Land, and Score to Justin Hurwitz also for La La Land. It was also nominated for 4 Golden Globes, won 2/5 BAFTA nominations, was nominated for a Grammy and several other honors. Novelist and critic Salman Rushdie publicly lauded the film. Davis returned with Mary Magdalene (2018). Patel returned in Hotel Mumbai (2018), Mara in The Discovery (2017), Kidman in How to Talk to Girls at Parties (2017), and David Wenham (Oranges and Sunshine (2010)) in Iron Fist (2017, TV-series) and theatrically in Beyond the Known World (2017). Lion is certified fresh at 85 % with a 7.3/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Lion?