Debating The King: Marsh’s movie is one that divides audiences and one of the few films that practically begs to be discussed following a screening. It’s also a film that is difficult to talk about without inserting your own opinion of the events that unfold in the movie or giving away too much. Co-writer/director Marsh has a fine line to walk in that he can’t reveal his intentions without possibly compromising the moviegoing experience.
“It’s one of those films that the less you know, I think, the more you’re going to enjoy it because it ambushes you in certain kind of ways,” explained Marsh. “And also my opinion as the co-writer and director of it has almost too much weight. It’s deliberately, I think, provocative at the ending, and deliberately has unanswered questions. The whole film is sort of built towards this father/son primal encounter and then we take it away from you the moment it happens."
Marsh continued. “I like the idea of people arguing about it, discussing it, and having different views about it. Too few films do that. Whether you like it or you don’t, it’s kind of good to have something out there – and there are other films out there that do this – that isn’t resolved and everything mapped out, and you’re not lead by the hand to an upbeat moral conclusions or downbeat moral conclusions. I think that’s one of its virtues, I would say.”
Marsh Keeps His Intentions a Secret: “You know, it’s one of those things where when we were writing the film, we didn’t really set out to write about issues or morality or about themes. You just don’t do that I think when you’re writing. You just kind of write a story that begins to surprise you and you kind of create characters and at a certain point, they begin to have their own life. So we’re often quite surprised by the reaction to the film, even now. Surprised by how some people really can’t bear it and get offended by it because it has incest and other things that people find troubling. But I think I do know what I intended as a writer for it to be. I think I do know what’s supposed to happen at the end. But I can’t tell anybody (laughing).”
On Casting Gael Garcia Bernal: “I immediately wanted to cast him. We were still on our third or fourth draft and I’d just seen ‘Y Tu Mama Tambien.’ I said to Milo, my co-writer who then became a producer on the film, ‘Look, he’s the one. He’s Hispanic and he’s a brilliant actor. He makes bold choices. He has this physical charisma that will carry the audience through his dark and diabolical journey.’
I wanted Gael very badly. I wanted him to be in the movie and he wanted to do it as badly as we wanted him to be in it, so we found him and he found us. He put a lot of work into mastering the English he speaks in this film, which is kind of the English spoken by somebody who’s grown up in a Spanish-speaking household. In South Texas half the population do that. Corpus Christi is half Anglo and half Hispanic. You can go for days without hearing a word of English. He put a lot of effort into it. He stayed with the film through all its many pitfalls before it was actually in production.
I’m very pleased that he agreed to do it because he did what I thought he was going to do, which was to allow his character to take you with him. He’s so physically charming and graceful and he plays it so beautifully. He plays it like a sort of wounded animal and I think you really do feel for him, even though what he does is truly diabolical. I mean, it really is. He knows he’s seducing his half-sister. He’s aware of it. There’s a scene in the film where he holds her hand for the first time. He knows it’s wrong; you can see it all over his face. He can’t stop himself. So I think we were very lucky that we got the script to him and he wanted to do it. I think it’s a really great performance. I’m very proud of him.”
Selecting Texas as the Setting for The King: Marsh said they chose Texas for a number of reasons. “It’s more subversive to do it in Texas now. Texas has become, in some respects… One aspect of modern America is defined by Texas, the kind of state it is. The political culture of Texas has been transplanted into Washington. These weren’t the thoughts I had when we started it. I just wanted to set it in an interesting landscape. When I knew the film was going to be about a Christian family, it felt like that was a pretty good spot to put them in. Then I went to Corpus Christi and thought it was a very visually interesting environment. We sort of blundered into something. On one level I became pleased with the subversive nature of setting it in a Texas Christian family.”
Page 3: The Ending of The King and Future Projects
