The story follows 21-year-old Elvis Valderez (Bernal) who’s fresh out of the Navy and on a quest to track down the father he’s never met. Elvis makes his way to Corpus Christi, Texas, and seeks out Pastor David Sandow (William Hurt). Introducing himself as his son, Elvis is spurned by the Pastor who has a new family and doesn’t want anything to do with the illegitimate child he had by a Mexican woman so many years ago. Warned to stay away, Elvis settles into town and begins a forbidden relationship with Pastor Sandow’s 16-year-old daughter Malerie (Pell James).
The Central Theme of The King: “It’s interesting that we hear so often in Hollywood about redemption," said Marsh. "It’s a word that’s thrown around about movies and characters and here we have a film that actually is about – literally – redemption. The final moment of the story is actually a plea for redemption and we’ve been sort of chastised and castigated for this, and yet it’s dealing with the real thing. The actual real meaning of the word redemption is what the ending of the film posits and is about.
It’s funny. We’ve taken some hits for it when it’s exactly what this word that people strive for and look for in other more superficial ways perhaps, we actually get into it and deal with it.”
So why does Marsh believe the film is taking such hits? “I think perhaps it’s a question of perception and expectation. The film isn’t a naturalistic film in the way that, for example a Ken Loach film is or the Dardenne Brothers do, and so it’s not naturalist yet it has a very sort of naturalistic background, you know? It’s shot in a sort of vaguely documentary style for all kinds of reasons. It has a very mythical story or a story I think you could set almost a thousand years ago about a bastard prince come to get his throne. It’s got that underlying structure to it.
I think maybe because it’s set in Texas and it involves Christians and incest, some more liberal-minded critics take it upon themselves to defend this attack, this small-minded attack, on Christians and red-minded states. But it really isn’t that. No one is attacking anybody. In fact I have a background in that religion and I know it really well. I don’t think that we are satirizing or making fun of people’s beliefs. We’re presenting them actually in a very straight way.
…It does rub some people the wrong way but you also get people who like the film – who passionately like it – too, so you get that as the nice side of a strong reaction to a movie. And so you embrace the good and the bad. If it does upset people or people think that we’re mocking and ridiculing Christians, we’re just not doing that. It’s not happening in the movie. What we’re doing is looking at their decisions based on faith and sort of asking questions about it. Surely we can do that. No one is off-limits. You can ask questions about what is a very important constituency in this country. We live in what appears to be now increasingly a country defined by Christianity. Why not ask a few cheeky questions about it? And that’s exactly what they are – cheeky questions.”
"I think that everyone views this film through their own eyes. I do, too,” Marsh explained. “You bring a lot to it. It’s the kind of film that if you want to see the William Hurt character as a misguided fool, then you could, but it’s certainly not how William plays it and not how I directed it. I wanted to see him truly as someone who is falling short of the glory of God and therein lies his tragedy. It’s impossible to be a perfect Christian. You can’t do it. There’s only man who did and he was the one who founded the whole religion. It’s absolutely crazy to think we can live up to these expectations. And so he does indeed…he suffers for it.
You see him praying and he means it when he prays. Every character in our story prays. And I guess they all mean it in their own ways, each of them praying. They mean it and they truly believe that God is part of their lives and God is guiding their decisions, and that becomes a tragedy for them. But as I always say, ‘The Lord moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform.’
At the end of the film we have a very bad sinner who has, we think, come to see the error of his ways and his ways have been pretty awful. There’s no question about that. But I don’t think it is in any respect an attack on religion or red state mentality. I do think that there are certain interesting connections with the wider culture that our little film sort of pokes away at in its own little way. I’m kind of proud of that, really.”
Page 2: Launching Debates and Casting Gael Garcia Bernal
