‘Mr. K’ Review: Crispin Glover Is A Traveling Magician In An Enigmatic Dark Comedy [TIFF]

A traveling magician waxes poetic about our lonely existence only to be terrorized by the inability to find solitude. Such is the dark comedy “Mr. K” exists in, the latest from director Tallulah H. Schwab (“Confetti Harvest”). Riddled with mounting anxiety as the walls begin to close in, “Mr.K” is half an exercise in dread and half an example of showing one’s hand too soon. While endlessly creative, it unfortunately grows tedious, wasting very little time before submerging its protagonist headlong into dream logic. Or, in the case of Crispin Glover’s traveling magician, lucid nightmare logic.

Therein lies both the beauty and pitfalls of this undoubtedly enigmatic picture. By resisting restraint and immediately setting its tone, the film breezes through its most dynamic elements. The surrealism at the story’s heart loses its edge because there’s so much of it all at once. Schwab delivers terrific imagery but lacks substance.

Glover’s Mr. K takes the subdued madness he walks into with relative poise. While he only meant to stay the night at a nearby hotel after one of his performances, that night slowly unravels into a greater, unyielding Kafkaesque, claustrophobic odyssey. Despite having checked in the night before, he can’t seem to find the exit. That said, things are odd from the jump. When he first reaches his room, people are huddling under his bed and his dresser, giving no explanation as to why they’re there. What’s his is the hotels and all of its inhabitants.

Things only get stranger after the first night when he fails to find a way out. He may momentarily accept bouts of chaos, such as the most hostile marching band since “Holy Motors,” to not-so-sage advice from the elderly women who seem to live in the hotel and a bustling kitchen of over-eager staff. There’s no shortage of hysteria. But what really gets to him and induces the most visceral tension is when he realizes the hallways are growing smaller, the walls drawing inward. The building seeks to suffocate them. This, plus everyone’s reluctance to hear reason, makes for a deliberately dire scenario as the protagonist grows increasingly desperate in his efforts to escape.

The film is at its best when it sticks to the simple structure of a man struck in a place as he tries but fails to escape. The script by Schwab attempts at greater meaning. At one point, Mr. K pleads that he’s “not the one they want” because he’s a “nobody.” That sentiment points to the notion that this hotel is a purgatory for wayward souls or a reason why he didn’t immediately panic at being caught up in it all. The lonely nobody is overwhelmed by a sea of faces. Of course, until it all becomes too much. But these greater meditations plus a third act dabble in magical realism pulls taut the film’s limitations.

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The real magic is the set and costume design, along with the utilization of practical effects. The molting green of the interiors casts a sickly atmosphere when you can nearly taste the recycled dry air. The style of the film is where the direction shines. While the narrative sometimes suffers from being odd for peculiarity’s sake, it maintains a firm grasp on its tone. The costuming lends it an additional timeless quality, and the score by Stan Lee Cole cements the bleak undertones that pulsate beneath the madness.

It comes as little surprise that Glover is so well suited to this role. His signature soft voice allows the character’s vulnerability to shine through even throughout his patience. His increasingly beleaguered form only benefits more from the actor’s unassuming sincerity. We feel his frustration, which makes the final third of the film all the more emotionally volatile as reason evaporates.

“Mr. K,” for its delectable practicality and set design, can’t help but suffer from its ideas. The bit establishes itself immediately, removing a certain necessary tension until the walls begin to close in. Assured in style and tone, it needed better pacing and a more drawn-out mystery to further elevate the formidable idea at its core. [B-/C+]

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