Not gods – Englishmen! The next best thing!

Rating: Null/10 (14 July 2010)

"I think it's one of the greatest adventure stories ever written!" – John Huston (on Rudyard Kipling's short story, "The Man Who Would Be King")
A glorious tall tale by director John Huston, "The Man Who Would Be King" stars Michael Caine and Sean Connery as Peachy and Danny, a pair of ex-British Army Sergeants. Realizing that 19th century Imperialism is not designed to benefit the lowly foot-soldiers who enact the policies and mandates of the Empire, Peachy and Danny decide to become "private Imperialists"; they resolve to conquer territory for their own personal gain.
Huston made many films about rugged adventurers and affable scoundrels. Few of his rapscallions, though, are as much fun as Peachy and Danny who, in typical John Huston fashion, are seeking fame, fortune and adventures in exotic faraway lands. "We're not little men," they say with a smirk, "and there's nothing we're afraid of!"
Fittingly, Huston's film is structured as a "tale within a tale", our heroes recounting a story to Rudyard Kipling (Christopher Plummer), the legendary writer upon whose novel the film is based. This technique allows Huston to adopt a very farcical tone: we're always aware that "The Man Who Would be King" is a very TALL TALE, falsified and made larger than life by both the narrator (Michael Caine) and the man who in turn narrates the narrator's narration to us (Rudyard Kipling/John Huston).
The film thus unfolds like a ridiculously embellished adventure, our heroes travelling over mountains, through Afghanistan and into the desert nation of Kafiristan. Their journey is absolutely preposterous ("Nobody's done that before!" Kipling growls in the film), but it's only the beginning.
Once in Kafiristan, Danny and Peachy defeat a local army, conquer a castle, raise a militia and proceed to conquer yet more territory. By the film's end, our duo has an entire monastery believing that Danny's an ancient god and so deserving of their riches, women and adulation.
Of course, like Huston's "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre", the good times eventually come crashing down. If "King's" first half offers camaraderie, wit, and funny banter, its second half offers madness, egomania and eventually defeat; the natives of Kafiristan figure out that our rogues are con-artists, and promptly kick their butts out of Afghanistan. But even this defeat is taken with good cheer by our two rascals. They really are an infectious bunch.
All adventurers need a side kick, and so Huston provides an ex-Burkha soldier called Billy Fish (Saeed Jaffery), a funny guy who serves as the interpreter and friend of our rogues. Fish spouts a ridiculous accent – a merger of British and Indian – and is constantly spewing an array of silly one liners.
It's not all fun and games, though. Though the film can be enjoyed as a bouncy adventure, it can equally be viewed as a story of two men battling convention, naysayers and nature, as a comment on colonialism, as a psychological parable about greed and ambition and as a study of religion and the role it plays in certain cultures (as well as the way the very same faith which enables heroes to move mountains can quickly and easily lead to self delusion).
Like many of Kipling's works, the film also critiques White Imperialism. This was, after-all, an Empire which stretched across the planet and which would be directly and indirectly responsible for billions of deaths. In Huston's hands, Danny and Peachy thus become a metaphor for the Empire's arrogance, brashly conquering territory, promoting itself as a saviour/god, misunderstanding customs, acting racist and pitting one tribe against the next, all in an attempt to wrestle away more wealth and control. Furthermore, the fact that our heroes are exposed as frauds and chased out of Kafiristan, strongly resembles the various revolutions that rocketed across the British Empire during the decade in which Kipling's tale was written (late 1880s). ie - the Empire came, saw, conquered, and then deservedly got kicked out of town.
What's remarkable, though, is how sophisticated "The Man Who Would be King" is compared to other similar films of the era. One must remember, the 1950s-70s were packed with films which attempted to rehabilitate the Age of Empire, and which attempted to white-wash and glorify British Imperialism ("Khartoum", "Zulu", "King of the Khyber Rifles", "The Planter's Wife", "Safari", "North West Frontier", "East of Sudan" etc). Countering these films were "serious" directors like David Lean, Satyajit Ray, and straight-faced fare like "Gandhi" and "Guns at Batasi". Huston, though, has made an anti-Imperialist adventure with the bounce of a 1930s-50s Imperialist lark. He pulls this off thanks largely to Michael Caine's performance and a subtly tongue-in-cheek script.
8.9/10 – One of Huston's greatest films. See Pontecorvo's "Burn", Herzog's "Wrath of God", "Goodbye Uncle Tom", "Passage to India", "Full Metal Jacket" and "The Quiet American". Worth two viewings.