The King of Kings
An interesting, if not entirely well-realized take on the Christ parable, starring Oscar Isaac as the voice of Jesus and Charles Dickens and his kid tagging along for some reason.
I grew up in the faith and was a movie nut early on, so I’ve seen quite a few film iterations of the Christ parable — from 1965’s “The Greatest Story Ever Told” to Martin Scorsese’s very revisionist “The Last Temptation of Christ” to Mel Gibson’s vividly affecting “The Passion of the Christ” to “King of Kings” in 1961, memorably featuring Jeffrey Hunter as Jesus with his armpits shaved so as not to offend audiences while he was dying on the cross.
The latest is “The King of Kings,” an animated effort from faith-based Angel Studios featuring Oscar Isaac providing the soulful voice of Jesus. It’s a handsome movie with decent, not great, animation and a few emotionally touching high points. It skims across much of the New Testament in a breezy, never-dull 102 minutes that sometimes feels like a Cliff’s Notes version of the Bible.
Other name stars in the voice cast include Mark Hamill, Uma Thurman, Ben Kingsley, Kenneth Branagh, Forest Whitaker and Pierce Brosnan. That’s an impressive lineup, and yet another cue that movies made by and for religious folks have gone mainstream — along with the film’s impressive impressive production values.
The days of zero-budget faith-based movies being projected on bed sheets hung in tiny churches are long gone.
Written and directed by Korean filmmaker Seong-ho Jang, “King” is based on the book “The Life of the Lord” by Charles Dickens, written around the same time as “David Copperfield.” It was composed for his children as a way to present a simplified version of Jesus’ story they could understand while very young, but was only published in 1934 long after Dickens’ death.
The depiction of Dickens (Branagh) relating the tale to his oldest son, Walter (Roman Griffin Davis), acts as the framing story to present Jesus’ story. But then Seong-ho makes the curious choice of actually inserting Walter and Charles Dickens into the story itself.
I guess the idea was to make the journey of Christ more relatable to a young kid (and by association the audience). But it’s frankly kind of weird to have them hanging around in the background, almost like Scrooge watching his Past, Present and Future. And they don’t just remain in “observational ghost” form, but actually interact with the people around them (little Walter gets jostled in crowds), spontaneously change outfits to match the setting and are even acknowledged by Jesus on a number of occasions.
It’s an off-putting juxtaposition, to say the least. Walter is a hyper kid obsessed with King Arthur and his sword, Excalibur, and messes up his dad’s stage performance of “A Christmas Carol.” After chastising the kid and taking away his toy weapon, Dickens looks to make it up to him by sharing ‘the greatest story ever told.’
Of course, Walter is enchanted and soon his scamp-y ways are behind him.
Kingsley is stern and small-minded as High Priest Caiaphas, Jesus’ chief accuser among the Pharisees; Whitaker is warm and worrying as Peter, Jesus’ chief disciple; Brosnan gives voice to Pontius Pilate, who just wants to wash his hands of what he sees as a dispute between Jewish factions; Thurman is Dickens’ wife, Catherine, who participates in the telling of the tale; and Hamill hams it up as King Herod, his belly bouncing higher than his ire at the newborn Jesus.
I should point out the movie shows Charles and Catherine as having three children, when in fact they had 10, though probably the movie depicts them when they were young and hadn’t yet had their full passel. (The real Walter was not the oldest, and died at 22 a pauper.)
It’s also unclear if the Dickenses really had a cat named Willa who got into all sorts of cartoon-pet antics, such as scattering the pages of Charles’ manuscript every which way.
Isaac has a terrific voice — as we well learned in “Inside Llewyn Davis” — and gives Jesus a sort of gentle, charismatic authority. He rarely raises his voice and barely bothers to reply to his accusers. His Jesus truly comes across as a peaceful shepherd just looking to tend to his flock. But he already knows the tragedy of his ending, and that informs everything he does in the now.
“The King of Kings” is probably best pitched to Dickens’ original audience: small children who may have hard of Jesus or the Bible and need a simplified entry into Christian scripture. As proselytizing entertainment goes, I respect the effort but can’t quite give it my blessing.