King
of the Travellers is cinematic excrement – it’s
best we get that statement out there right off the bat lest there be any
confusion. This is not entirely surprising, given director Mark O’Connor’s
previous film Between the Canals was
every bit as objectionable. We should, within reason, never write off a
director based on their first feature – we’d have missed many great masters if we
did. Canals could well have been an aberration:
its narrative clumsiness and directorial deficiencies at least partially attributable to major financial limitations and simple inexperience. King of the Travellers, being a
sophomoric effort with altogether better resources, does not deserve such kind
excuses, and merrily proves Canals inadequacy.
A stream of non-subtlety begins with the title – any inherent presumptions a name like King of the Travellers might suggest to you are likely to prove entirely accurate. A brief albeit theoretically pivotal flashback prologue aside, we open with what – two films in – has become a Mark O’Connor trademark: a lengthy credit sequence, set to jaunty Irish folk music and featuring black & white archive footage of the travelling community (Between the Canals featured random shots of Dublin instead). This may seem like a harmless enough opening, setting a historical scene, but actually it’s indicative of several of the film’s ultimately crippling flaws. It is pointless, overlong and conjures up a mood that has absolutely no bearing on the film ‘proper’. It is five minutes of filler in a film that already desperately struggles to justify its supposed feature length. Actually, in that sense, it sets the mood perfectly, if not in the intended manner.
The film is set in the travelling community
of the Fingal area of Dublin. The Moorehouse and Power families are engaged in
a long-running feud, one of the inciting incidences of which was the murder of
Martin Moorehouse (David Murray). A decade or two later, Martin’s son John Paul
(John Connors) is a bare-knuckle fighting champion who wants to protect his
father’s legacy. His uncle Francis (Michael Collins) is trying to put an end to
the feud, although unpredictable Mickey ‘The Bags’ Moorehouse (Love/Hate’s Peter Coonan) wants anything
but. Matters are complicated as the Moorehouse and Power lands are separated by
‘settled’ land, and those owners aren’t too happy about the constant traffic
through their fields.
The plot of King of the Travellers is built on rotten, clichéd foundations that collapse early on, the rest of the film desperately playing out in the ruins. It
pretty much plays out exactly as you’d expect it to, albeit with a bafflingly
illogical final ‘twist’ that rather incredibly only makes things worse. There’s
probably around fifteen minutes of actual worthy narrative progression, and
therefore even at a lean 70 minutes (precluding opening and closing credits)
constantly struggles to find stuff to put on screen.
A bizarre, redundant fantasy sequence is one
of the most obvious indicators of the film’s seemingly unstoppable stream of
filler, but it’s the star-crossed love story between John Paul and childhood
friend Winnie Power (Carla McGlynn) that really
defines the film’s desperation. It aims for Romeo
& Juliet, but ends up more like Gigli.
Near the start, O’Connor even has the cheek to directly reference The Godfather. At its best, King of the Travellers merely reminds
you of much better stories, the direct allusions an awkward act of further self-sabotage. It all leads to a supposedly tragic conclusion - John Paul's death as his true love looks on - that
is so poorly staged the natural response is simple, innocent, pure laughter. The divide between melodrama and ridiculous is often wafer thin, and this film stumbles back and forth with hilarious frequency.
King
of the Travellers isn’t populated by ‘characters’,
such is the clunkiness of the exposition and dialogue. It’s a film instead
occupied by strange apparitions who behave like they’re reading out chunks of a
plot synopsis rather than interacting like believable human beings. Even then
they’re contradictions, with protagonist John Paul being equal parts sensitive
and psychotic, and not particularly convincing in either case. This is all
despite the enthusiasm of the cast, a large percentage of whom are members of
the travelling communities (alongside some settled actors like Murray, Coonan
and McGlynn). It’s actually very obvious they’re at least admirably trying to
be convincing, even as the scripting and direction ensure they can never
possibly manage such a thing.
The film doesn’t have anything of note to
say about the culture it represents – again dealing with shorthand and
stereotypes wherever possible. The documentary Knuckle was a far more insightful portrayal of the unique,
fascinating traveller culture. KotT,
despite tackling basically similar subject matter, comes across as a
direct-to-video exploitation flick rather than a sensitive portrayal of an
often misrepresented community.
With a plot that’s about as adventurous as
a particularly uninspiring episode of Hollyoaks,
there are hints that visually at least O’Connor and his returning
cinematographer collaborator David Grennan have a bit of ambition. There’s a
nifty enough shot or two during the film’s first ‘major’ sequence at a traveller
wedding. But later visual flourishes never coalesce into anything coherent, and
stylistically the whole film feels ill-at-ease with itself (for example the
aforementioned flight of pure, meaningless fantasy). Still, of everything the
cinematography is worthiest of praise, faint though it may be. That, and a
vaguely amusing use of The Final
Countdown.
As it chugs past the finish line - a finish line shoddily drawn onto the ground with human blood and feces - the main
impression King of the Travellers
leaves you with is that it has simply wasted your time while concurrently and definitively insulted your intelligence. Plagued by amateurish
direction and downright incompetent writing, it’s a film that’s near impossible
to like. It’s easy for me, the smug reviewer, to sit here spewing vitriol at a
local production so many people have put time and effort into (‘if you can’t
say anything nice…’ springs to mind). But we the audience deserves better than
this shit. The cast and crew deserve better. The travelling community
deserves better. The Irish film industry deserves better. Basically, everybody deserves better than King of the Travellers.
I, as you may
have gathered, despised this movie.
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