Martian Death Ray

Recently I finished Kipling’s The Jungle Books, and it was such a great romp that I’ve become obsessed by the man, his writings, and India. I’m an obsessive man—my life could easily described as one obsession stacked upon another for thirty-something years. Sometimes I have two or three obsessions going at a time. At this time, my obsessions are photography and all things Kipling. And being who I am, it’s not enough that I stick with Kipling. I must watch every movie inspired by Kipling’s writings.

Recently I rented The Man Who Would Be King, which overlapped with my Michael Caine obsession. John Huston, who directed the film, based the film on Kipling’s story of the same name, a story that deals with two “gentlemen” at large in Colonial India. Apparently, Huston was obsessed by Kipling’s story, and for thirty long years unsuccessfully tried to turn the short story into a movie. Finally in the 1970s, Houston was able to quench his obsession, making the movie and casting Michael Caine and Sean Connery as Peachy and Dan respectively.

The Man Who Would Be King is one of those rare movies where the director successfully expands the story and thoughtfully prunes those scenes and events that would have trouble working in a different genre like film. And there’s the amusing and dramatic touch of inserting Kipling as a character in the screenplay—a decision more than justified by the autobiographical details the author included in his short story.

The story, like many of Kipling’s stories about India and its environs, remains relevant (the story takes place shortly after the second Afghan War). And it isn’t a stretch to see Peachy and Dan’s plan to become the kings of Kafiristan through their military prowess as a cautionary tale about the desire for empire. What begins as a humorous and mad plan to grab both gold and power, becomes a passionate desire to bring civility and enlightenment to Kafiristan and its neighbor’s—at least it is a passionate desire with Dan. Peachy remains Peachy, and he becomes the skeptical voice of the two, encouraging Dan to grab the gold and split while the natives still believe them to be gods. And the tension between the two friends builds as Dan’s desire to create a civil society in Kafiristan builds to grandiose proportions.

This movie works because Huston, Caine, and Connery shower their flawed and misguided protagonists with a great deal of affection and humanity. In the hands of a lesser director or a director with a political agenda, this movie would have easily become didactic and wholly uninteresting. But in Huston’s hands, the misguided Peachy and Dan elicit genuine pathos. And while the movie explores the idea of empire, it also explores the importance of friendships—a major theme in Kipling’s many works, a theme leftist critics seem to ignore (perhaps because rabid leftists have no friends?).

Given the situation in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, The Man Who Would Be King begs us for a much needed moment of reflection and gives us a thoughtful glimpse into the past, a glimpse revealing how little has changed since Great Britain fought for supremacy of the Khyber Pass.

It would be a mistake to think that this movie only succeeds because of something so base and vile as politics or current events. The movie is a great movie because like Kipling’s story, it asks more questions than it answers. It forces the moral relativist to confront the ugliness of his philosophical position and the apologist for empire to confront the ugliness of his dreams for power. True to life, the questions posed by Huston and Kipling have no easy answers, and there’s pain and frustration on any path you take. These are questions that neither candidate for president and few politicians have the courage to honestly confront, because their solutions (if there exist any) cannot be reduce to glib sound-bites and empty campaign promises.

In the end, there’s little comfort but friendship and compassion.

That’s all a civilized person can ask.