The King Is Alive

I just hated this film. It really didn't work. I wasn't feeling very well when I watched it and it came out of a Jennifer Jason Leigh search.

I won't give away any of the ending but the gloom and despondancy that everyone involved in this film showed began to make me feel, life wasn't worth living.

Anyhow I would totally forget the JJ Leigh content, if you like deep gloom and doom, watch it, if you don't then don't!!

A real pleasure to watch a well thought out film. A story that tells of a bus breakdown in the desert and death seems to await the passengers until someone decides to do a meagre production of King Lear. Will it hold them together or will the sinister story of Lear bring out their true characters as they struggle to survive?

With good photography and a stellar cast giving an altogether wonderful performance it's difficult not to soak up the heat and atmosphere.

Don't worry if you hate Shakespeare the story remains on its own but if you know Lear it will greatly add. Great.

A group of tourists are stranded in the Namibian desert when their bus loses its way and runs out of fuel. Canned food and dew keep the tourists alive, but they are helplessly entrapped, completely cut off from the rest of the world. As courage and moral fibre weaken and relationships grow shaky, Henry, a theatrical manager, persuades the group to put on Shakespeare's tragedy King Lear. As the tourists work their way through Henry's hand-written scripts, real life increasingly begins to resemble the play.

This film is the 4th Dogme rules films the rules are as follows:

1. Filming must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in (if a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found).

2. The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. (Music must not be used unless it occurs within the scene being filmed, i.e., diegetic).

3. The camera must be a hand-held camera. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted. (The film must not take place where the camera is standing; filming must take place where the action takes place.)

4. The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable. (If there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera).

5. Optical work and filters are forbidden.

6. The film must not contain superficial action. (Murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.)

7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden. (That is to say that the film takes place here and now.)

8. Genre movies are not acceptable.

9. The final picture must be transferred to the Academy 35mm film, with an aspect ratio of 4:3, that is, not widescreen. (Originally, the requirement was that the film had to be filmed on Academy 35mm film, but the rule was relaxed to allow low-budget productions)

10. The director must not be credited.

This superb psychological horror-drama takes a basic archetypal situation used in other modern classic stories like The Beach or Lord of the Flies, and uses it to great effect. A bunch of strangers are stranded in an unfamiliar place. You know it's going to end in tears, but the question of course is how.

There are no special effects or contrivances - this is what the no-frills Dogme film movement stipulates. But beyond that, we needn't get fixated on the Dogme aspect as some film critics have, because unlike some other Dogme creations, this is a compulsively watchable film that goes to the core of human behaviour in extremis.

The gradual erosion of personalities by the desert is fascinating for three reasons: the tight script, the starkly beautiful setting, and the superb, visceral acting from a stellar international cast. The camera work and the stripping down of humanity by the raw elements reminded me a little of Bertolucci's The Sheltering Sky.

There is likewise no need to fixate on the King Lear theme - by pretending to put on a classical play, the castaways struggle to remain sane. And by introducing this narrative device, the film makers have succeeded in unmasking the true personalities behind the actors-to-be. Some critics have seen this as a pretentious decoy, but if you have travelled to remote places with strangers, you will recognise every minute of this gritty drama as potentially - and terrifyingly - true.

And next time you take a bus across the desert, think of The King is Alive and be afraid, be very afraid.

interesting story about survival in the desert,good to see how different people cope with the same problems.