The King (Movie of the Week)

The King is a very interesting and unusually effective attempt at 3dmm short-form drama. Sergon manages to simultaneously use a wide variety of polished visuals and camera angles and still show a remarkably restrained directorial hand, particularly impressive for a film released in 2003.

The viewer is given an absolutely minimal amount of background information. We're given our main character, who we can deduce is a ruler of some kind. We're shown that a war is going on, and led to believe through narration and dialogue that our ruler's side is losing. This is all that we know. We're not force-fed a scene of him executing a pleading prisoner or, alternatively, heroically giving an inspiring speech to a group of soldiers, to clue us in to what we ought to think of him. The movie retains this ambiguity all the way through to its last shot. It's easy for the viewer to construct a surrounding story for himself in which the ruler is a great hero, yet equally easy for him to see him as a villain. This is a very mature approach, and lends the movie a certain richness and depth that it wouldn't have if we were forced into one or the other conclusion.

The scenery and animation is generally quite good for 2003. The shot of the ruler's bedroom was particularly well constructed. Although this is a (mostly) slow-paced and contemplative movie, Sergon does a good job of using a wide variety of camera angles and interesting animation techniques to keep things visually interesting even when there is no action happening. Very few shots are filmed straight-on, with many extreme close-ups and slow pans that add to the film's tense atmosphere. Particularly noteworthy is Sergon's use of shadows, which, especially in the shot where the ruler talks to his guard, are done in a very simplistic yet effective way. The leadup to the final scene uses an extended first-person shot. It's not as well animated as most of the rest of the movie, but it's interesting and serves to mark the transition between what are essentially the movie's only two scenes. His use of a handmade character in the final scene was also a fine directorial choice, even if the character itself was not particularly well-made.

The movie suffers somewhat in its editing. The ruler's opening monologue is intercut with shots of his soldiers at war. These shots are competently done, but the cuts are sometimes jarring and come at seemingly inappropriate points. I'm honestly not sure that these scenes were necessary at all - I think the information gleaned from them might actually have been more effective coming from the ruler's adviser or through some other method that kept us with him. Sergon's direction is nuanced enough not to require these action scenes, and they take the viewer away from the ruler character, who really should be the movie's sole focus.

The voice acting was good, but not outstanding. Ben Fortier gives the ruler a sort of vague, pan-ethnic, foreign accent, which went well with the movie's overall purposeful lack of specifics. He doesn't go overboard emotionally, giving us enough to empathize with the character, but not so much as to asininely guide us in our feelings. The orchestral music used in most of the movie was good and fitting, but it too was sometimes undermined by the jarring cuts. The use of popular music in a few places seemed slightly off, but not enough so that it really bothered me.

Overall, The King's flaws are more than outweighed by its positive qualities. In an era of bombastic shoot-em-ups, Sergon gives us a thoughtful, introspective piece, which somehow manages to function as an effective character sketch of a character we know nothing about. It's easy to see why a movie like this has been largely overlooked, but it certainly deserves a spot among the 3dmm classics and was an excellent choice as movie of the week.

[Aaron Haynes]

I think the war scenes were absolutely necessary, they gave context and heightened the tension of what was happening. Staying with the King the entire time lowers the stakes, we're told things are happening, but we don't hear or see any of it. It's just him sitting in a room feeling emo without seeing the tanks thundering down him. We leave the King's palace to see statues and propaganda throughout his kingdom, too, which serve the same purpose of establishing the setting. Although the old-school Action Joe 2 death scream was pretty out of place.

Good review, I agree with most everything else.