Like practically every other
small town depicted on film, director Jay Craven's fictional Kingdom County,
Vermont, is overflowing with eccentrics, racists, and, well, racist eccentrics.
A Stranger in the Kingdom starts off as a pleasantly innocuous (but,
refreshingly, irony-free) meditation on said beings in this small town, circa
1952. Predictably, it slowly escalates into an increasingly disturbing thriller
that exposes fraudulence in the town's institutions and unearths a few long-buried
secrets. Unexpectedly, however, it does so with a wit that's alternately compassionate
and biting and with performances that create complex characters out of what
initially seem like caricatures.
Three
strangers enter "the Kingdom": Reverend Walter Andrews (Ernie Hudson),
a wise, black, ex-G.I. minister hired to preach at the town's most attended
church; Nathan (Sean Nelson), his unruffled teenage son; and Claire LaRiviere
(Jordan
Bayne),
a young, enchantingly innocent yet beguiling French-Canadian expatriate. Through
various means (such as the Reverend's tendency to smoke in public or carry
a pistol), they all disturb many of the Kingdom's citizens. These range from
the relatively sane Charlie (David Lansbury), a young, blandly sincere attorney,
to his cousin Resolved (Bill Raymond), an aging, drunken, gravelly-voiced
coot who intriguingly comes off as both harmlessly waggish and precariously
deranged. When one of the strangers is brutally murdered, accusations between
the remaining strangers and the Kingdom's local yokels fly. The film then
mutates in a slightly off courtroom drama, with Henry Gibson as a sheriff's
flunky (doing the threatening but comic schtick he's been doing so well since
Nashville) and a unrecognizable, bearded Martin Sheen in a cameo as an elitist
out-of-town prosecutor.
Based
on a Frank Howard Mosher novel, the story itself is not particularly illuminating
or original, but the attention Craven (Where the Rivers Flow North)
devotes to the setting, remarkably, is. Working on a tight budget, he not
only captures the effervescent beauty that permeates this New England pastoral
setting, but he also has a keen eye for detail and lyricism. It shines most
brightly in the shimmering shafts of soft light that fall through the chapel's
windows and the loose planks of wood in Resolved's barn; in the nameless,
silent mural painter that opens and closes the film (like bookends on a tall
tale that's all too real); and even during a frenzied cockfight. At first
glance, these eccentrics look merely laughable as they get all riled up at
the sight of two motley roosters engaged in a vicious grudge match. But Craven
swiftly weaves his camera through the crowd, capturing not only the movements
of the dueling roosters, but also those of the spectators. Craven slides the
viewers into the joy and delirium of the characters without belittling it
as common or inhuman. As much as he romanticizes, however, Craven never glosses
over the sometimes backward attitudes that lie underneath and contradict the
idyllic facade. By doing so, he makes Kingdom county a fascinating place to
visit for a few hours, although you probably wouldn't want to live there.