A King and His Movie

1986
7| 1h43m| en
Details

Buenos Aires movie director, very fond of the legend of the King of Patagonia and Araucania, decides to make a movie about it. Despite of financial troubles, technical problems, misfortune and desertions, he undertakes the journey to Patagonia for the film with a second-rate actor company. Neglected by the producer and shortly after by the company, he will make the movie alone, in a surreal landscape like mad.

Director

Producted By

Carlos Sorín Cine S.A.

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Reviews

SunnyHello Nice effects though.
Roy Hart If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.
Stephanie There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes
Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.
Samuel-Maldonado La Película del Rey follows a spurned director who suffers a string of unfortunate setbacks, who each time becomes more and more determined to finish his project. The journey of the director as he tries to get funding, train actors, and improvise scenes is exciting, and the string of misfortunes that befalls him can sometimes be humorous, but jumping into it in a comedic mindset, La Pelicula del Rey fell pretty flat. Although the situations in this Argentinean comedy can be outlandish and the movie has some great moments, it is not especially funny as a whole. The satire of the film is rich, however, and provides the real value of the movie. If you're in the mood for a comedy, go elsewhere, but if you're looking for a clever satire about the Argentinean film industry, this is your movie.
Michael Neumann Movie-making can sometimes be, at best, a desperate enterprise, which is one reason why the process lends itself so well to satire. In this slick but all-too accurate Argentine parody a director's devotion to his pet project gradually turns to obsession when Murphy's Law takes control: anything that can go wrong does go wrong, beginning on the eve of photography with the producer's disappearance and a mutiny among the cast. The lengths to which the frustrated auteur pursues his dream, a dramatized history of a 19th century French pioneer's ill-fated quest to declare himself king over primitive Patagonia, soon lead him into delusions of grandeur equal to those of his subject, and as a result his film grows more absurd and abstract as it continues. The satire works on several levels simultaneously, with the director himself becoming a surrogate emperor, and his megalomania suggesting a parallel to the country's turbulent political leadership.
pmgram La película del rey, besides being one of the best Argentine movies ever, is an interesting epic of an artist. The whole story is about a film director who just wants to shoot his production in a Third World country, in which neither the market nor the state will help him. So, actors go on strike, producers suddenly disappear, technicians don't like the work they are doing and everyone expects to earn a huge amount of money, since they are in showbiz. In the end, the artist is still dreaming with his story, he goes on filming alone, with the only help of his best friend, one of the producers, and everything goes wrong. However, one last scene is deeply touching: without a penny, going back to the city from the shooting scenarios, in Patagonia, in a lousy train, the director starts dreaming again with another powerful wonderful history. All this, narrated with a very particular humor and an unique love for film-making itself, makes this my very personal very favorite movie.
karpool A film crew in Argentina prepares to shoot the wild-but-true adventures of a man who in 1860 declared himself "King of Patagonia." The director's artistic vision and his producer's business sense struggle to complete the project while dealing with the complications of losing their financial backing, fighting government red tape, and juggling an off-the-street cast and crew -- including live pigs -- in an old bus.As the movie weaves back and forth between real life and scenes from the film they are trying to create, the project disintegrates into a madness that parallels that of the King of Patagonia. Amid a surreal desert landscape, left with only mannequins as his actors, the director's dreams turn into dust and blow away in the Patagonian wind. But all is not lost...This is an excellent movie, echoing the real-life attempts of Sorin to make his film about de Tounens, the historical figure who, inspired by stories of travellers returning from South America, decides to make the freedom of the Aracuana indians his goal, by proclaiming himself their ruler.Entertaining, bizarre, funny, touching -- definitely worth the viewing.