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Humpty
Dumpty ALL
THE KING'S MEN: Written and directed by Steve Zaillian.
Cinematography, Pawel Edelman. Music, James Horner. Starring Sean Penn,
Jude Law, James Gandolfini, Patricia Clarkson, Anthony Hopkins, Kate
Winslet and Mark Ruffalo. Sony Pictures, 2006. PG-13.120 minutes.
Have you ever dashed from one social event to another only to enjoy neither because of the scurrying involved? Sometimes declining one invitation for another is easier than trying, electron-like, to be in two places at once. Such is the dilemma at the heart of All the King's Men, a new version of Robert Penn Warren's novel (not a remake of the taut 1949 film). Written and directed by Steve Zaillian — writer of Schindler's List and director of Searching for Bobby Fisher — All the King's Men keeps pulling us in different directions until eventually it pulls itself apart. By virtue of his ability, this is Sean Penn's movie, but Jude Law gradually assumes control of the story. Penn plays the Huey Long-ish Willie Stark, an idealist county treasurer who rises to the governorship of Louisiana. ("Every man a king, but no one wears a crown" was Long's slogan.) Stark, like Long, is an inflammatory populist with the ability to incite the working class. Jack Burden (Law) is the troubled reporter assigned to Stark. Burden eventually becomes so enamored with Stark's message that Burden's paper attempts to censor him, after which Burden quits. Stark then hires Burden to dig up dirt on Stark's opponents. Instead of refusing, Burden goes looking for a shovel. Stark and Burden are meant to mirror each other, but it's a warped image from the start. Stark at first accepts, then rejects, then possibly accepts the help of corrupt businessmen in order to achieve his political goals. It's a tightrope Stark walks his entire career. Burden, like Stark, is a flawed idealist, but the younger Burden is from the upper class. Burden represents access to the white-haired industrialists to whom Stark is a deranged idiot, given Stark's initiatives to increase services for the poor. To the poor, Stark is a folk hero, but Stark won't succeed unless Burden can influence the aristocrats to lend their support to the governor. Some of those aristocrats, it turns out, are members of Burden's own family. Corruption, here we come. All the King's Men is slow and complicated, two qualities I can stand in isolation but not in combination. The movie somehow manages to be both obvious and hard to follow, with a humid, lethargic feel that overwhelms every actor but Penn. Penn's Stark is an engrossing creation of hick charisma and big-city scheming. Penn should, and probably will, be nominated for an Oscar. But while his stump speeches and public addresses invigorate the movie, they're like jewels strung along thread. Each speech is a bigger crescendo than the last, to the point that you expect to see fireworks ignite with every wave of Stark's hands. But then we fall back into Burden's narrative, which finds him laboring toward the discovery of a family secret. The main failing of All the King's Men is that Stark's enemies remain faceless, depriving him of a single opponent to confront. Conflict and tension are therefore built via language, and language — particularly Southern vernacular after the Depression — is used to great effect in this film. But the words aren't directed at any one person or idea in particular; they're so florid, so overripe, that a language barrier develops, distancing us emotionally from the very people we're supposed to care about. All the King's Men raises important questions, occasionally with some eloquence. Is corruption for the greater good still corruption? Can good come from evil? Along for the journey are Sadie Burke (Patricia Clarkson) and Tiny Duffy (James Gandolfini), who occasionally get to act like characters but for the most part provide skilled window dressing. Caught up in Stark's orbit, each character enters a cycle of decreasing idealism, until one implodes, others explode, and the broken pieces are too numerous to count.
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