David and the Kingdom

David is alone in his tiny kingdom, a corner in north-western USA. The murmuring trees and the sky over his head are all he needs; then, there are the animals, to whom he gives the love that he was unable to give to people, not even his son. But his tormented silence, his heavy step in the foliage and his face offered up to the mosquitoes that he does not kill tell us from the outset that he is not simply one of those Thoreau-style Robinson Crusoes who come to the forest to appease their contempt for civilisation. Above all, David is there to atone for the crimes of which the forest knows he is guilty. Years ago, he had killed more animals that would be needed to fill his present kingdom. Stags, bears, lynx, wolves, whose trophy-heads still adorn his cabin and hang heavy above him with their full weight of penitence. It is a kingdom of shadows, the murmuring comes from the trees as much as from the ghosts swirling around in his conscience. And the course grain of video, the discreet and disturbing silence that the film allows to unfold in between David’s rare utterances all make David & the Kingdom into a dark and benumbed fable – the negative of a Disney technicolour: he is Bambi’s hunter, condemned by a self-inflicted fate to wait until the forest and the mosquitoes have drunk his last drop of life in the name of justice. Unless the love of the elks saves him.

Jérôme Momcilovic