I saw KINGS at a special showing for local cast and crew, in association with the Austin International Film Festival, so I enjoyed the extra benefit of a Q&A afterward with the director and his father, with whom he had co-written the script, and some of the main actors. The audience, which was about one-third African-American, was enthusiastic about what they'd just seen. One or two commenters specifically appreciated such a positive portrayal of the Black experience, and several remarks suggested that the whole production was divinely ordained. Would that it were so.
I had first sensed that the results might be underwhelming when the opening credits ended by announcing that the story was "inspired by actual events" a claim so thin as to be hardly worth making. And then I began spotting anachronisms. Although the setting is the Depression, several of the male actors had visible ear piercings, and in an early scene, a blue-collar white man is sporting a very modern hipster goatee. The protagonist, who has just come off a two-year stretch with little more than the prison-issued suit on his broad back, has a wasp-waisted muscularity that could only come from hours spent every day with a personal trainer. And his sternly responsible landlady makes a habit of walking around in a red nightgown that, in those days, would have been taken by whoever saw her as a sure sign that she made her living from prostitution.
Of course, anyone who's trying to portray a time or place with which they're not intimately familiar is going to be hard-pressed to avoid such gaffes. I was much more disturbed by the movie's depiction of a Deep South in which racism hardly seems to be an issue. Whites and blacks mingle and converse and work together with practically no suggestion of the climate of oppression and intimidation that Negroes had to deal with every day. (See, for instance, Richard Wright's memoir, BLACK BOY.) In a social milieu where a colored child could be beaten to death for sassing a white woman, where lynching was a commonplace occurrence, and the Klan was respected and influential, it's dumbfounding that KINGS includes a scene where black men assault (and possibly murder) a white man with no apparent fear for the consequences. Indeed, the whole incident seems to be forgotten almost immediately. This bespeaks a cluelessness, not just about history but about the dramatic potential of the story, that undermines the whole project.
But here I'm veering into criticism of KINGS as a piece of storytelling. I don't want to be heavy-handed about this, because it's obviously a well-meaning film, and a crowd-pleaser as well. I'll observe that the movie isn't very ambitious it tells a simple, sentimental story of generally decent people trying to make do in hard times. One might give it points for its sweet-natured amiability, or even for glimmerings of class consciousness (for instance, in its sweatshop scenes). However, at almost two hours long, it's listless and unfocused, with little dramatic tension and so, for all that it tries to be heartwarming, remarkably little payoff at its resolution.
The central conceit of this movie is that the colored gentlemen of this small town meet in weekly fashion shows, at which they contend for a sort of "best-dressed" award. Andrew Jones, the writer/director, explained that he'd borrowed this idea from a similar contest held in South Africa by the Oswenka tribe. Indeed, he said, this is the source of the word "swank."
Well, in fact, "swank" is derived from Dutch or German. "Oswenka" is the form in which it's borrowed into Zulu. Similarly topsy-turvy is the philosophy of "swanking" that the foreign-born "Mr. Gamba" regularly intones before these scenes: "No matter how poor he is, if a man can face himself in the mirror, he can face life." Gamba himself, with his frayed and patched lapels, is the very model of shabby dignity. But apparently he's not talking about the importance of having a clear conscience or personal integrity.
What the participants in his contest go to great lengths to demonstrate is that they are dressed with a painstaking (and costly) attention to the slightest details of fashionable apparel. The character who joins in, arrayed in a mismatching outfit of stolen duds and worn-out footwear, is ridiculed by all and sundry. Only when he, and the other main characters, suddenly show up dressed to the nines, is this movie ready to grant them a happy ending.
It's characteristic of the failings of KINGS OF THE EVENING that its moral about the virtues of the struggling poor should be so thuddingly bourgeois.
I had first sensed that the results might be underwhelming when the opening credits ended by announcing that the story was "inspired by actual events" a claim so thin as to be hardly worth making. And then I began spotting anachronisms. Although the setting is the Depression, several of the male actors had visible ear piercings, and in an early scene, a blue-collar white man is sporting a very modern hipster goatee. The protagonist, who has just come off a two-year stretch with little more than the prison-issued suit on his broad back, has a wasp-waisted muscularity that could only come from hours spent every day with a personal trainer. And his sternly responsible landlady makes a habit of walking around in a red nightgown that, in those days, would have been taken by whoever saw her as a sure sign that she made her living from prostitution.
Of course, anyone who's trying to portray a time or place with which they're not intimately familiar is going to be hard-pressed to avoid such gaffes. I was much more disturbed by the movie's depiction of a Deep South in which racism hardly seems to be an issue. Whites and blacks mingle and converse and work together with practically no suggestion of the climate of oppression and intimidation that Negroes had to deal with every day. (See, for instance, Richard Wright's memoir, BLACK BOY.) In a social milieu where a colored child could be beaten to death for sassing a white woman, where lynching was a commonplace occurrence, and the Klan was respected and influential, it's dumbfounding that KINGS includes a scene where black men assault (and possibly murder) a white man with no apparent fear for the consequences. Indeed, the whole incident seems to be forgotten almost immediately. This bespeaks a cluelessness, not just about history but about the dramatic potential of the story, that undermines the whole project.
But here I'm veering into criticism of KINGS as a piece of storytelling. I don't want to be heavy-handed about this, because it's obviously a well-meaning film, and a crowd-pleaser as well. I'll observe that the movie isn't very ambitious it tells a simple, sentimental story of generally decent people trying to make do in hard times. One might give it points for its sweet-natured amiability, or even for glimmerings of class consciousness (for instance, in its sweatshop scenes). However, at almost two hours long, it's listless and unfocused, with little dramatic tension and so, for all that it tries to be heartwarming, remarkably little payoff at its resolution.
The central conceit of this movie is that the colored gentlemen of this small town meet in weekly fashion shows, at which they contend for a sort of "best-dressed" award. Andrew Jones, the writer/director, explained that he'd borrowed this idea from a similar contest held in South Africa by the Oswenka tribe. Indeed, he said, this is the source of the word "swank."
Well, in fact, "swank" is derived from Dutch or German. "Oswenka" is the form in which it's borrowed into Zulu. Similarly topsy-turvy is the philosophy of "swanking" that the foreign-born "Mr. Gamba" regularly intones before these scenes: "No matter how poor he is, if a man can face himself in the mirror, he can face life." Gamba himself, with his frayed and patched lapels, is the very model of shabby dignity. But apparently he's not talking about the importance of having a clear conscience or personal integrity.
What the participants in his contest go to great lengths to demonstrate is that they are dressed with a painstaking (and costly) attention to the slightest details of fashionable apparel. The character who joins in, arrayed in a mismatching outfit of stolen duds and worn-out footwear, is ridiculed by all and sundry. Only when he, and the other main characters, suddenly show up dressed to the nines, is this movie ready to grant them a happy ending.
It's characteristic of the failings of KINGS OF THE EVENING that its moral about the virtues of the struggling poor should be so thuddingly bourgeois.