Popcorn Reviews With Cybèle: A Stranger in the Kingdom 

By Cybèle Elaine Werts  
CybeleW@aol.com

Based on a book by Vermont’s own Howard Frank Mosher

Popcorn Kernel Rating: 2 1/2 Kernels - A good mystery is the perfect way to start a long sultry summer.

Twenty minutes into A Stranger In the Kingdom, a woman whispered behind me "I’m trying real hard to understand what’s going on." My friend and I grinned at each other in the dark. The bad news is that A Stranger in the Kingdom is pretty darn confusing for a while. Between the Northeast Kingdom accents, Quebecois accents, and the general eccentricity of the characters, the first mystery of this film was just figuring out what was what.

The good news is that Director Jay Craven pulled it together after a bit and set the mystery on the table. The "stranger" could be the black minister who comes to this small Vermont town with resistant son in tow and stirs up the racial gumbo. But more likely it’s the Canadian girl who travels down to meet eccentric character #1 as a sort of mail order bride. Although I never quite got why the town thought she was a good time girl, it was her frantic escapes from one grubby grasping hand to another that moved the plot along.

This mystery was well crafted with it’s share of surprises. The story was sometimes about a murder (you know, every mystery has a murder) and sometimes about racism in a 1950’s town. To his credit, Jay Craven created a movie that expressed racism as the complex thing it is, from the gray of a fleeting racist thought to the black (so to speak) of a Northeast Kingdom redneck. Admittedly, at times I thought I was watching an upgraded version of To Kill A Mockingbird, but that’s OK. A good story is a good story.

Suggested Gustatorial Accompaniment: A tasting cup of grade B dark Vermont maple syrup. Enigmatic flavors with a little mystery.

Copyright 2000