We all find ourselves lost at some point, searching for direction and meaning. In Mr. K, writer-director Tallulah Schwab creates a world where we can view this journey, guided by the title character, played with wondrous awkwardness and passionate performance by Crispin Glover. It’s a bizarre world, strangely familiar at times and completely foreign at other times, yet a very interesting journey from start to end.Â
We meet Mr. K (Crispin Glover) performing his lackluster magic show to a disinterested crowd. He carries on his journey, taking him to a hotel for a one-night stay, as he has a performance the next morning at what sounds like another small and unimpressive venue. After a long and somewhat strange speech from the woman showing him to his room, he settles in, but not before chasing out a man hiding under his bed and a maid in his closet. Things only get worse as the following day, he leaves his room and discovers he cannot find the exit, and this is where the real adventure begins.
Like a lost puppy, Mr. K moves from one strange situation to another, from confused to slightly content to annoyed to a desperate need to leave. It is a fascinating journey through marching bands, life as a worker in the restaurant business, and people coming and going, including two wonderful elderly ladies named Ruth and Sara (Fionnula Flanagan and Dearbhla Molloy). All the while, there are not-so-subtle hints that he has come to be a sort of liberator. This is initially rather humorous, and Mr. K cannot understand why he is and why he cannot leave, so being some sort of figure to follow or look up to seems, at best, lofty aspirations.
Glover does a marvelous job at navigating Mr. K through the chaos he is exposed to, selling some scenes with facial features and awkward movements of someone who is truly lost. Watching him meet people, make friends, and embrace a sense of belonging, maybe for the first time, is satisfying, even if most of it isn’t real. That is also part of the puzzle for both Mr. K and the viewer, sifting through the steady visuals and situations to discover what is real and what isn’t. The fantastical situations shuffle around, and Glover moves through them with an awkward kind of ease, making them very believable.Â
The hotel is a character in its own right, old but elegant in its own way, yet as Mr. K continues his journey through the film and the hotel itself, it begins to whither and die like a plant in need of watering. It fits nicely with the film’s overall feel, and you feel something in motion that needs some conclusion. It’s a point open to debate as to what it is, but there is no denying the parallels to real life, including the pitfalls, choices, and decisions one makes.
I found it ironic that with all the weirdness and fantastical situations in the film, Crispin Glover was playing a character that could be described as the movie’s straight man. Mr. K is lost, a little unsure of who he is and where he is going, but the strange and unpredictable situations encountered are not about him but what he is experiencing. We watch a man move from one bizarre situation to another and seemingly become trapped, only to find something within himself he never knew he had.Â
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It’s a credit to writer-director Tallulah Schwab, Crispin Glover, and the team behind this film that they’ve made something that you can’t fit into a box. It’s not your average genre picture and is more than an adventure or drama. It’s like traveling down the Yellow Brick Road without quite knowing how you got there and where you will end up.
As it turns out, the ending is much less important than the actual journey. That is something we should all understand in the land of the living.