MR. K is a meandering and odd journey into an infinite hotel. While it’s visually striking and Crispin Glover gives a wonderful performance as the main character, the film’s web of allusions to other works grows a little thin and leaves you wondering what the film says on its own.
Mr. K (Crispin Glover) is a travelling magician who arrives at an impossibly large but crumbling hotel to stay overnight. As he’s shown to his room, he’s perturbed by the urchin emerging from within the hotel walls and when he finds multiple people hiding in his room. When he attempts to leave in the morning, he discovers that he’s lost in the hotel’s seemingly endless corridors and is unable to find escape. Mr. K wanders the hotel, meeting its eccentric inhabitants along the way: two very English-sounding French twins; a marching band who parade through the hallways; and a kitchen full of chefs who venerate the egg as their primary ingredient. But the longer he stays, the more Mr. K suspects that the hotel walls are literally closing in and that the hotel itself is starting to decay into ruin.
Despite the deliberate blankness of his character, Crispin Glover is striking as the film’s protagonist. He’s a blank slate, exasperated and seduced by the strangeness of the hotel and its inhabitants. Director Tallulah H. Schwab cleverly plays off Glover’s reputation for playing unusual characters by having him play the straight man to the odd and confusing characters around him and by making him stand out as the only American in the cast of Europeans.
“The overall impression is of a film with little to say beyond its entrancing and absurdist visuals.”
Aside from the film’s immediate and obvious allusions to Franz Kafka’s fiction, there’s a whole web of allusions and references making up the fabric of the film. The episodic nature of Mr. K’s meetings with strange people in a strange place owes a lot to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, while the living hotel has elements from Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, Stephen King’s The Shining, and Shirley Jackson’s work. In terms of visual style, there’s clear filmic inspiration from BARTON FINK and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s films, particularly DELICATESSEN. The style of European absurdism and the composition of shots also have a Roy Andersson quality that is refreshing to see.
However, this deep layering of allusions only serves to highlight the hollowness of the film on its own terms. As Mr. K drifts aimlessly through the hotel’s endless hallways, it’s difficult to avoid feeling that aimlessness in the viewing experience. The meandering quality of the narrative ultimately lacks the thematic richness and interpretability of something like BARTON FINK. What social commentary there is remains too underdeveloped and scattershot to be particularly effective. The overall impression is of a film with little to say beyond its entrancing and absurdist visuals.
MR. K is entertaining and visually arresting but its thematic thinness and meandering quality leave the film feeling somewhat insubstantial.