The Rivals of Amziah King (Andrew Patterson, 2026)
Alternate title: Amziah King, the Band, the Song, the Movie.
Oh what a spectacular fable! The kind of movie that you let wash over you, only to find yourself floating on your back, buoyant, adrift and briefly bestowed with the gift to hear the sound of everything in everything. The whole thing feels like what if a Les Blank documentary was shot like a Dodge commercial, cut up by Soderbergh, the writing channeling Twain but through the rhapsodic energy of an Andrew Bird song.
The opening sequence itself is worth the price of admission, replete with song, set up and action (!!!). But the movie doesn’t quite catch on after that and deliberately so. For the first hour, this settles into a sort of holding pattern — episode and interlude — as though the movie were just a visual album, something akin to those by the Lumineers. Perhaps one could mistake the first hour for three distinct 20 minute intros intercut together.
Even so it all flies by, steered by the trademark ramblings of the cowboy-jesus-like McConaughey and the portraits of that rag tag bunch of southern townsfolk. The twist (if you can call it that) recasts the movie as a revenge thriller, but the plot is still a conduit for what appears to be folk christian parable.
There are few who’ve scoffed at how disproportionate the revenge is in relation to the crime. But I argue that by the time we get to that part, the movie has ascended into a mythic realm. And it is precisely because these choices are ethically ambiguous, morally compromised, that the film stands as an effective parable. I’ve endured my fair share of religious prose growing up. And if there’s one thing I know to be true about all mythological folklore, it is that there is always a choice and a death and no amount of virtue or penance can wash away all sin. Also, just cause evil appears human don’t mean it is any less evil. We gotta do what we gotta do and then live with the consequences.
Watched this a second time with அ only to love it all the more. Felt like an illustrated children’s book by Willcox Smith that I could read over and over again.
Absolutely love Angelina LookingGlass here and her distant piercing stare. Everyone here knows the assignment and then delivers an extra 10 percent just cause they can.
Patterson’s lurid colours and roving camera keep the frame constantly bobbing as though they were caught in a current. Even the few rare moments of stillness are underscored by the lilt or boom of folk music. The camera and sound, in weaker hands with a weaker script could be labelled a cheap trick conceived to manipulate. But Patterson is anything but cynical. This is a sincere and, most of all, confident film. And to parse the text as separate from its form would be akin to having a sermon or song delivered in bullet points over morse.
Watching this a second time, I understand that the final sequence may come off as too cheesy or, to keep up with the apicultural theme, too honeyed. But, to paraphrase the movie, ‘we don’t think a movie is worth watching until our heart stops pumping while we’re watching it.’
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p.s. Patterson reminds me of Ben Zeitlin and Jeff Nichols in that all their films are attempts to ground myth while keeping alive a quintessential magic. Shall be rooting for him henceforth.
p.p.s. Also Fuck yeah slab serifs!