The Elephant King

Definitely not a movie for children with that detailed sex scene. Children below the age of 13 should not see the movie. I suggest the movie is not worth he money. The film contains a sex scene, a nightclub scene and some profanity. Excellent acting by Ellen Burstyn, Tate Ellington and Florence Faivre. I wonder how it got 6 awards. The cinematography by Diego Quemada-Diez is good but Seth Grossman's direction has wrecked the film. I suggest do NOT waste your money on the film. And again. This movie is rated R rightly and is not for children. A better one is 'Kiss the Sky'. It too contains strong sexual content and is not suitable for children. But it has a better direction than this movie.

I enjoyed the way this movie portrayed the relationship between two brothers; and the way they each dealt with their individual problems. The actors who played the brothers both did a fantastic job. Unlike other reviews, I didn't find the showing of different places in that area of Thailand to be overdone, much of it was during the scenes where the younger brother is getting to know the girl, Lek, and play in well to the the story.

One problem with the movie was lack of subtitles during parts where they weren't speaking English. I'm not sure if that was a flaw because of watching it on a DVD or not. It made certain parts of the movie a bit difficult to understand, but it wasn't too hard to get the gist of what was going on.

Deciding to Watch a film like ELEPHANT KING is always a gamble. Ellen Burstyn was the only easily recognizable name. The DVD artwork Layout and synopsis looked interesting; shot mostly in Thailand by an international crew. So I took a chance! Lucky me! This is one gamble that paid off nicely...In the End! And I mean that BOTH literally and figuratively! Here's a direct quote from IMDb: "Jonno Roberts was Nominated for Best Actor at the Sacramento International Film Festival for 'Elephant King'. It won Best Picture and Best Score." Isn't it a rather sad commentary on the realities of film marketing and distribution that an unpretentious little wonder like this, made in 2006, only received LIMITED 2008 theater release, and took another year to be released on DVD?

The first 1/2 of the Blurb I read is erroneous. The author of that Review either didn't actually see it, or didn't pay the slightest attention to its opening minutes. Perhaps the TITLE may conjure up rather grandiose expectations of regal splendor and sumptuous royalty. However, there is certainly none of that here! There is a baby elephant, which besides offering detached moments of poignancy, also serves a pivotal symbolic and metaphoric purpose.... At least it does before the film ends.

The ensemble performances were remarkable. Seth Grossman (Butterfly effect 3) must be complimented on his understated, evenhanded direction, which, when coupled with the outstanding acting; spot on depiction of the vapid, high-energy emptiness of Thailand's nightlife and its minions; the highly believable very late-bloomer coming-of-age transformation and self-discovery of the younger brother central character; Plus the low-key ever-so-slightly surreal Buddhist/Zen spin that is imparted via a bittersweet finale that manages to neatly "THAI" together most of ELEPHANT's loose ends, make it a solid 9********* experience! ............ Before viewing ELEPHANT, I recommend you contemplate this THAI proverb: Patience and Forbearance are always rewarded with Happiness! ..... ENJOY!

A young New Yorker travels to Chiang Mai on an anthropological research grant and quickly loses himself in drink, drugs and loose women. Sound familiar? Substitute gender, nationality and mission as needed, and this plot could be about many foreigners who arrive in Thailand intent on noble causes and find themselves a bit distracted.

The Elephant King was shot almost entirely on location in and around Chiang Mai, Thailand's northern capital, and one of the film's primary characters is Chiang Mai itself. A montage of muddy city walls and steaming moats, 7-Elevens and abandoned housing estates, Space Bubble disco and Wat Chet Yot, night markets and old wooden houses, the city's paradoxical grit and grace have never before been so well-captured in any feature film, Thai or international. The script in fact turns Chiang Mai into a microcosm of Thailand, thrusting Western stereotypes about the country to the fore - and then turning them inside out.

But the core story isn't about Chiang Mai or Thailand at all, but about Jake (Jonno Roberts) and Oliver (Tate Ellingham), two brothers locked in a bully-victim relationship which both are struggling to transcend. Expat life in Chiang Mai, and their competing love for the same bar girl (Florence Vanida Faivre) merely serve as catalysts for the relationship to achieve its bloody catharsis.

Several parts of the film, including the opening sequence, were shot in New York and include memorable performances from Ellen Burstyn (Requiem for a Dream, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood) and Josef Sommer (The Enemy Within, An American Story), playing the brothers' parents, Diane and Bill. As a father envious of his sons' carousing in Thailand, Sommer provides several of the film's best comedic moments. Burstyn shines during her time on film, playing the weepy, overly-doting mother with textbook technique.

Because co-producer DeWarrenne Pictures is a Thai-registered company, the screenplay did not need advance government approval. This means we get an unvarnished - if somewhat Western-orientated - look at Thai culture and society. If and when the film does receive distribution in Thailand, there's a good chance some scenes will be censored for depictions of drug use and sex, even though these elements are neither overly graphic nor gratuitous to the story.

Although this is writer/director Seth Grossman's first feature film, I'd say chances are good to excellent that the effort will be well received critically. The film pegs Grossman - an NYU film grad who loosely based the movie on his own experiences living in Chiang Mai as a Princeton-in-Asia scholar four years ago - as something of a story-telling genius.

His art film attitude - which is thankfully more substance than pose - is ably assisted by the intense cinematography of Diego Quemada, a disciple and close associate of camera wunderkind Rodrigo Prieto of 21 Grams fame. Whether or not the film does well commercially, The Elephant King could easily reap a few international film festival awards, perhaps even becoming an underground classic along the lines of Trainspotting.

I saw it last night and was pleasantly surprised. My girlfriend was less than pleased in how it portrayed her home country, however. Apparently, she had seen an interview with Florence Faivre before the movie, in which Florence explained that Thailand is shown in a completely positive light. She went on to say that this is the 'real' Thailand and everyone should come to see the movie to experience how beautiful Thailand is. My girlfriend, while she didn't hate the movie in and of itself, found these comments to be particularly offensive. I must explain that she's a fairly inexperienced girl, who has been exposed only tangentially to the seedier aspects of Thai life (the reason why I care for her so much, perhaps). Her rose-colored glasses couldn't cope with the stark realism the movie portrays.

And it IS realistic. Many westerners come to Thailand to run away from various responsibilities and the movie shows just how easy it is to fall into that world. Indeed, one walk down beach road in Pattaya will show you just how 'zombie-like' foreigners can become here. Of the two brothers in the film, Jake is a wonderfully constructed character. You're definitely not supposed to like him, and Jonno Roberts pulls that off well. Ellen Burstyn is good as the doting old mother, and Tate Ellington plays a passable depressed New Yorker.

For the negatives, Seth Grossman (director) seems to spend about 25% of the film showing us montage scenes of 'life in Thailand'. This mainly seems to focus on tuk-tuk rides and open-air markets. While I understand that the vast majority of audiences won't be familiar with the setting as intimately as us expats are, for a 92 minute film you need to keep the 'atmosphere' shots to a bit of a minimum. Florence Faivre mails in a cardboard performance in badly accented 'Tinglish'. While she's obviously a looker, the voice-acting just didn't do it for me. While the film was often touted as being the vehicle for Diego Quemada-Diez's cinematographic genius, I didn't find it to be too revolutionary (or anything Darren Aronofsky hasn't done better). The most negative thing of all, however, is that they cut MY scene down to about one second! Two days of shooting (and drinking) and I'm on screen for an inaudible 'thank you' when Flo hands me a Singha. Tough business, show business! All in all, I recommend this movie as one to generate a bit of discussion between Thais and foreigners. As some mentioned before, no one really comes out as 'the good guy' here, and that's a pretty realistic depiction of the human condition.