King of the Hill **** (1993, Jesse Bradford, Jeroen Krabbé, Lisa Eichhorn) – Classic Movie Review 2136

Writer-director Steven Soderbergh’s moving, witty and highly engaging 1993 coming-of-age drama stars Jesse Bradford as a resourceful 12-year-old boy called Aaron who struggles to survive growing up in Depression-era St Louis. The boy plots and schemes after his German immigrant parents Mr and Mrs Kurlander (Jeroen Krabbé, Lisa Eichhorn) succumb to poverty by living in a seedy hotel.

When they send their hungry small son Ben (Joseph [Joe] Chrest) to live with relatives and his mother is committed to a sanatorium with tuberculosis, Aaron is left on his own in the hotel. His father, a traveling salesman working for the Hamilton Watch Company, is off on long trips from which Aaron can never be certain he will return.

In an effective change of gear for his third movie, Soderbergh films beautifully with the help of the immaculate performances he draws out of his actors. Bradford, who was 14 at the film’s release, easily holds the film as its main protagonist and Krabbe does some of his most subtle work for some time as the father. There’s a slight glow of nostalgia and sentimentality over the story but the film is pulled into sharp focus by Soderbergh’s subtly written, socially conscious, character-driven screenplay, which he adapted from A E Hotchner’s Thirties memoirs.

King of the Hill is an outstanding movie boasting a period sense and production values that are worthy of a Merchant-Ivory movie, with Elliot Davis’s cinematography and Gary Frutkoff’s production designs superbly crafted. The restrained and understated score is composed by Cliff Martinez, with piano work and cues from classical composer Michael Glenn Williams.

Also in the cast are Karen Allen, Spalding Gray, Elizabeth McGovern, Cameron Boyd, Katherine Heigl and Adrien Brody. Lauryn Hill appears in a small part as an elevator operator, her first screen role.

The then-26-year-old Soderbergh was the youngest director to win the Cannes Palme d’Or award in 1989 with  Sex, Lies and Videotape. He was nominated for the Palme d’Or at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival for King of the Hill. Neither his second film Kafka (1991) nor is fourth The Underneath (1995), fifth Gray’s Anatomy (1996) nor sixth Schizopolis (1996) are anything like as successful or highly regarded.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2136

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