This is a very great little movie. Gael Bernal is an amazing actor of his generation and this film gives him a very difficult role to portray and in which he succeeds. The King deals with many complex issues; abandonment,loss, religious fanaticism, family relationships and the role of the family in society. It also deals with the emotional blackmail that can go on in family life and how people deal with it. Bernal's character Elvis is a dysfunctional man living on the edge and trying to find his identity. At first one cannot really see his true character and it is easy to think he is an innocent but damaged man. As the film progresses it emerges that Elvis will go to any lengths to find his place within a family that he can never belong to. His relationship with his true father is very sad and tragic. It is obvious that Elvis has had a very difficult childhood and the one weakness in the film is that lack of background to why Elvis is the way he is. However; his mother was a prostitute who was once used and abused by his now holier than thou pastor father - the fact that his father has a very concealed dark side emerges once or twice in his very brutal treatment of his two other children; he is a bully, a liar and a phony religious fanatic. His religious role is just a cover up to his real persona. It is no wonder that Elvis is actually at heart a psychopath; he must have inherited his very brutal genes from his father who has psychopathic tendencies himself. The tragic destinies of the wife and children of Elvis's father seem to serve only as a tool to pay back the pastor for his obvious past deeds and double standards. The ending of the film is very abrupt which seems to make it more powerful; we can see that the psychopathic mind operates without remorse and with no empathy for other people; it is only out to satiate its own narcissism. Everyone exists as an extension of the psychopath's internal dilemma and his goal to find release from an inner torment that is impossible to be released from because the damage is too deep. It shows that children who have been damaged at a very young age will never find their way back to a true and balanced self as the self is too damaged to be saved. Evil acts are done in The King but I cannot say that this is a gratuitous film that seeks only to sensationalise violence. It is a study of the psychopath and how family life plays such a great part in making society what it is.
Review of The King
