CIFF 2022 | ‘The Kings of the World’ review: Magic and menace abound in Laura Mora's mythopoeia
Colombia’s official Oscars entry for 2023 is a haunting, phantasmagoric reinvention of the Monomyth that should not be overlooked.
Carlos Andrés Castañeda in “The Kings of the World.” Photo courtesy of Film Factory Entertainment.
To the general observer, Colombia has long been maligned as a country overrun by poverty, drugs, and violence. Even with the rehabilitation of its reputation slowly finding steam in recent years, and with the mainstream success of “Encanto” surely helping efforts along, it is still nigh on impossible to separate Colombia and its surprisingly underrated film industry from gritty tales inextricably intertwined with the country’s bloodstained past. After all, such is the form that a nation’s healing process often takes. “The Kings of the World” is one such film; sensitively exploring the Colombian conflict’s legacy of corruption and violence through a hallucinatory reinvention of the Monomyth.
“The Kings of the World” follows five boys slumming it on the streets of Medellín. Rá (a stoic, sombre Carlos Andres Castañeda) is the eldest among the ragtag gang and their de facto leader. Following his lead to various degrees of obedience are lanky, awkward Sere (Davinson Florez); silent observer Nano (Brahian Acevedo); defiant contrarian Culebro (Cristian David), and the show-stopping Winny (Cristian Campaña), a machete-wielding 11-year-old boy with the coolest mullet in all of Colombia. Their lives, replete with turf wars and bandaged wounds, are interrupted when Rá receives a letter from the government, purportedly returning ownership of his displaced grandmother’s land to him. Desperate for a slice of the world to call their own, Rá and his found family embark on a surreal and revelatory Monomythic journey across the Colombian countryside to reclaim what is theirs — but are met with betrayal and bloodshed at every turn.
The plot beats of Laura Mora’s sophomore film may seem familiar (if not slightly overplayed), but director Laura Mora’s coup de grace is her clever use of Lynchian motifs and sequencing to perfectly flavour what might otherwise have been another bland road movie. A whispered monologue introduces us to the streets of Medellín — “One day, all men fell asleep… and all the fences on Earth burst into flames.” Meanwhile, in the countryside in the dead of night, an out-of-tune piano plonks away at a decrepit, neon-tinged cabaret bar that seemingly appears in the middle of nowhere. A woman caresses Rá’s head as he sheds a single tear. Then morning comes, and the spell breaks; the cabaret dancers are homely grannies and the club is but a ramshackle rural residence.
Beautiful yet down-to-earth moments of Magical Realism like this are the clay with which Mora resculpts the most retreaded narrative in the world. Scenes that are rooted in reality still feel fantastical, too. The film’s cinematography never ceases to amaze, constantly making images more striking than they should have any right to be — I never thought the sight of water dripping into rusty buckets would ever send a pang of emotion rippling through my chest, and yet here we are. The end result is a delicate, intriguing and balanced dream that pays homage to its influences without the aggressive exertion of incomprehensible surrealism that other film festival circuit contenders like “Pacifiction” sometimes resort to.
For five total newcomers to acting, Mora’s ensemble cast gel brilliantly together onscreen. In fact, perhaps it is their newness to the profession that has helped their performances seethe with raw, naturalistic energy. Under Mora’s focused direction, the boys exude the loose, blustering bravado that comes with believing youth is equivalent to immortality; grabbing at electric fences and wishing on broken streetlights in scenes that beautifully burst to life. This is further augmented by the dynamic choreography of the film’s fight scenes; movements that Castañeda and his crew easily execute with lean, mean swagger. The moments in which they are idle coincide with the film’s weakest points, but Mora’s screenplay still shines overall and the energy never slumps for too long.
Haunting yet full of heart, “The Kings of the World” perfectly captures the intoxicating feeling of epic journeys, in which the world sprawls out before you and anything seems possible. Not many films can evoke the kind of deep and unspeakable resonance that Mora has conjured up here. Full of both heartbreak and hope, one gets the feeling that Rá and his brothers are truly the kings of the world, particularly as the film reaches its dizzying, phantasmagoric climax. With “The Kings of the World” officially being selected as Colombia’s Academy Award submission for 2023, hopefully the film will go on to earn a statuette or three, and spur on a newfound appreciation for Colombian cinema at long last.
