Musings on "The Man Who Would Be King"

I watched John Huston's "The Man Who Would Be King" last night. I wasn't familiar with the Rudyard Kipling short story, so I had the pleasure of going into the story almost blind. All I really knew was that Sean Connery and Michael Caine were the leading men, and that was enough to sell me on its cinematic worth. However, I can see why this one has largely faded out of the mainstream consciousness. It's a fun, old-fashioned adventure movie, but relies on a lot of foreign exoticism that's largely fallen out of favor. Thematically, it comments heavily on the perils of Imperialism, and our heroes behave very badly toward the native peoples they take advantage of throughout most of the story.

I don't want to spend too much time on the particulars of the film itself, but the plot unfolds as follows: Peachey Carnehan (Michael Caine) and Daniel Dravot (Sean Connery) are a pair of rogues who have made a very bad name for themselves in British India, and hatch a plan to journey to Kafiristan to become conquerors and kings. After journeying through the Khyber pass, they use their training as ex-soldiers to train and organize the various villages who are warring against one another. In no time, they have an army and take control of the whole region. Due to coincidence, Dravot is mistaken for a god, giving the Englishmen access to even greater power and riches. Downfall comes when Dravot lets the adoration go to his head, alienating him from Carnehan. Another accident reveals Dravot's lack of divinity to his subjects, and the pair are forced to face up to their crimes.

Could "The Man Who Would Be King" still be made today? Probably not by anyone in Hollywood, and certainly not in the same way. So much of the story is dependent on the unflattering portrayal of the Afghan peoples of the Kafiristan region as superstitious dupes, the film is often an uncomfortable watch for a modern viewer. To be fair, the Connery and Caine con-men characters are certainly no angels and get a richly deserved comeuppance in the end, but the film's biases are obvious. You could probably sell a modern version as a satirical comedy, if the indigenous peoples could be swapped out for more politically correct targets. Or you could use the bare bones of the story for a typical action-adventure picture, but only by studiously avoiding any attempt to address the deeper themes of the material and playing the cross-cultural cultural misunderstandings for laughs. The "Pirates of the Caribbean" is a good example of the second variation, where Captain Jack Sparrow is briefly adopted as the ruler of a cannibal tribe before his subjects predictably get the munchies.

Watching "The Man Who Would Be King," I marveled at how the culture of film production itself has changed so drastically since the 70s. The film was shot on location in Morocco, and most of the extras came from nearby villages. Back then it was still possible for film crews to jet off to some far away locale, and conscript the local population to be a movie's "cast of thousands" without worrying about issues of cultural exploitation and other sensitivities regarding the portrayals of native cultures. Werner Herzog made a career out of dragging Klaus Kinski all over the globe and letting him terrify the locals in "Aguirre: The Wrath of God," "Fitzcarraldo," and "Cobra Verde." I have fond memories of the early Spielberg films like "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and the first two "Indiana Jones" installments, where so much was shot on location, and the frame was often crowded with local extras. The High Priest Kafu Selim, a prominent figure in "The Man Who Would be King," was memorably played by a 103-year-old local villager, Karroom Ben Bouih.

But this type of epic filmmaking is a thing of the past. You rarely see big budget films so concerned with realism these days, when the "cast of thousands" can be computer generated and risk-averse filmmakers can recreate just about anything or anywhere on a locked-down soundstage. Sure, films like "Mission Impossible" and "James Bond" will go on location, but the sets are far more controlled, insured and secured against any possible dangers, and unknown variables are frowned upon to protect the studio's bottom line. Western filmmakers that do incorporate more local talent on the fly often run across unforeseen controversies. Consider the well-documented case of the "Slumdog Millionaire" child stars, who became celebrities after the film's success, but were left in abject poverty after parting ways with the production. Or read up on what happened to the Native American tribes that were involved with "Dances With Wolves."

Thirty years ago, when the media wasn't as omnipresent and the lawyers weren't so ruthless, filmmakers could swoop in, play god with the natives, and be on their merry way without worrying about the potential disruptions they left behind. Nowadays if they misbehave, they're held accountable just like dear old Daniel Dravot, as they should be. They just don't make pictures like "The Man Who Would Be King" the way they used to, but that isn't a bad thing. Do I miss films where the villages actually had villagers who looked like they lived there? Yes. But so it goes. The age of imperialism, in all its forms, should be over. If anyone ever remakes this film or revisits the story in any seriousness, I hope they appreciate the irony. Or better yet - I'd like to see it from the Afghan point of view.