God’s Holy Trousers: The Man Who Would Be King

​With you-to the end of the world!” 
― Rudyard Kipling
 
Anyone who knows me, understands that I am a man who changes obsessions as often as most people change their clothes. Films are mostly the objects of my compulsion, but I willingly confess that an occasional non celluloid subject can preoccupy my mind as well. For the sake of this blog, we will stick to film. When a film takes over my limited brain span, I am powerless to fight it. I watch it repeatedly, hum the soundtrack incessantly and replay scenes over and over in my head,
 
This week’s obsession is The Man Who Would Be King (1975), directed by John Huston and starring Michael Caine as Peachy Carnahan, Sean Connery as Daniel Dravot and the exceptional and late, great Christopher Plummer as Kipling himself.  
 
This was a pet project for Huston who first wanted Gable and Bogart, then Burton and O’Toole, Lancaster and Douglas until finally settling on Paul Newman and Robert Redford to play the leads. Newman wisely suggested that only true Englishmen should play the parts and I’m glad Huston took that advice. I can’t imagine anyone else playing the two working class soldiers who dream of becoming kings.
 
I won’t bore you with any more trivia that I liberally stole from Wikipedia. There is a racist moment that disturbs me involving Peachy, Kipling and a fellow passenger but it is not enough to take me out the rest of the movie. The rest of this 2 hour and 9 minute running time is damn near perfection.
 
Morocco doubles for Afghanistan and Huston, quite the adventurer himself, does an excellent job taking full advantage of the rugged location. The cinematography of Oswald Morris is Oscar worthy and the score by Maurice Jarre is rapidly becoming one of my favorites.
 
This is old fashioned adventure at its finest, directed by a master of his craft, and if you have not seen it, get your ass over to HBO Max and check it out.