KRT DIRECTAll The King’s Men
Rating: 1.5/5
Directed by: Steven Zaillian
Starring: Sean Penn, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, James Gandolfini
Now playing at: Galleria 6, Chase Park Plaza
Steven Zaillian’s remake of “All the King’s Men” has attracted some particularly vitriolic reviews. The direction is awful, but a powerful story and a decent lead performance from Sean Penn do make the film rise to become viewable cinema.
I arrived at the film screening with low expectations based on rumors dismissing the film as terrible. Without having seen the original 1949 film nor read the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1946 Robert Penn Warren novel and with little knowledge of the Louisiana politician (Huey Long) that the film is based upon, I found myself enjoying the film despite its faults, solely on the basis of its enticing plot. However, I soon learned about the above-mentioned superior renderings.
Jack Burden (Jude Law) is the right-hand man of populist Louisiana Governor Willie Stark (Sean Penn). Burden relates Stark’s political career from its humble beginnings, through its tyrannical plateau and finally to its tragic conclusion. Stark’s political maneuvers force Burden into conflicts of loyalty between his mentor, Judge Irwin (Sir Anthony Hopkins), childhood friends Adam (Mark Ruffalo) and Anne (Kate Winslet) Stanton and his persuasive boss.
The story is simple: the descent of a well-intentioned official into American political corruption. Stark begins as a hick: a champion of the poor who is thrust into power through tragic chance. Given power, he demands justice for the destitute, and is willing to do anything to achieve it. He believes that good can only be created from bad. Striving for his ideals, regardless of cost, Stark uses and alienates everyone around him, becoming an unabashed despot.
Stark’s commitment to his fellow hicks and his personal relationships with his family fall by the wayside as he grows more concerned with the pettiness of politics, such as ensuring that institutions engrave his name into stone for posterity. As Penn Warren explained it, great people have no ambitions because they know they are great – they have no need to name a hospital after themselves to be remembered. In contrast, Stark’s ambitions and thirst for power are never sated. His ego drives him to isolation and catastrophe.
Many critics have panned Penn’s performance as too wild and spasmodic. However, I found his swaggering, emotive Stark to be a wonderful interpretation of the character, superior to Broderick Crawford’s angry shouting in the 1949 film. Penn gives Stark a political charisma that makes believable his character’s power over the masses.
Other strong performances are given by Hopkins and Winslet, both of whom act with a nuanced reserve that allows their characters to contrast with Stark’s flamboyance.
Unfortunately, Jude Law is poorly cast as Burden, the audience’s conduit to the action. His weak acting, coupled with an inconsistent Southern accent, come close to derailing the entire film. The Southern accent proves equally elusive for James Gandolfini (whose voice and mannerisms often mirror Tony Soprano) as the dim-witted ‘Tiny’ Duffy.
Worse, Steven Zaillian appears inept at mature direction. I find most Oscar-nominated films to be prefabricated drivel – seemingly made from a checklist of what Mr. Oscar requires. Yet few films have been so obvious in manipulating the emotions of its viewers as “All the King’s Men.”
The film is loaded with phenomenal actors, yet the music soars into blaring melodramatic forte with each Stark speech, as if Penn’s performance isn’t adequate enough. And, in case you can’t tell when to be sad, some overbearing somber music will make sure that you empathize on cue. To account for members of the audience who may be deaf, Zaillian fills his shots with obvious techniques and infantile symbolism to ensure all strings of human emotion get pulled.
The bottom line is that the new remake of “All the King’s Men” excels only in its root story – a tale that I found better executed in the 1949 film and in the original, brilliant prose of Penn Warren.
The 1949 Robert Rossen film won three Oscars and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2001. This 1949 version is slightly dated, particularly in the characteristic tameness of the era in dealing with sex and death. The remake adds the rawness of these themes, but such rawness is largely unnecessary.
The remake also vowed to stick closer to the original text. This was a success, in a way. While the old film rearranged plotlines and scenes, the remake sticks closely to the details of each scene it includes. However, the 1949 version includes many themes and plotlines that the remake completely ignores.
Not surprisingly, the story is told best in the novel. The films focus solely on Stark, through the eyes of Burden, to comment on American politics. This is a profound weakness, as the novel has an added emphasis on Burden himself, and the comfort/fear dichotomy of destiny, which Burden personifies as “The Great Twitch”: a force that controls our lives like an involuntary spasm controls a person’s face. The remake touches this briefly in Burden’s musings on the power of idealism, but his character is never fully developed to completion as in the novel.
Having never driven West like Burden, I cannot subscribe to belief in “The Great Twitch.” However, I’m convinced that somewhere out there prowls a rough beast that slouches over Los Angeles: an omnipotent “Great Twit” that is responsible for the continued greenlighting of these vile Hollywood remakes.