Golf In The Kingdom

• Director: Susan Streitfield
• Screenwriter/Written By: Susan Streitfield
• Based on the Novel By: Michael Murphy
• Producer: Mindy Affrime
• Starring: David O'Hara, Jim Turner and Frances Fisher, Malcolm McDowell, Mason Gamble, Tony Curran
• Running Time: 86 mins.
• Language: English
• Rating: PG

Director Susan Streitfield takes on a project that a few famous directors failed to bring to fruition. Golf in The Kingdom is Streitfield’s adaptation of the book written by Michael Murphy who is also the co-founder of the Esalen Institute, a key figure in the Human Potential Movement. Murphy’s book has been reared as the best selling golf novel of all time.

The film, like the book, is about a young American named Michael Murphy (!) played by Mason Gamble, unfortunately known for his role as Dennis Mitchell in the 1993 film adaptation of Dennis the Menace. Michael is a philosophy major at Stanford University and is en route to study Eastern religions in India in 1956. He has a layover in Scotland for twenty-four hours and has long awaited the opportunity to play golf at Burningbush, a famous local golf course. By chance he hooks up with an enigmatic golf pro named Shivas Irons (David O’Hara) who is giving an on-course playing lesson to his friend Baile Maclver (Jim Turner). Shivas and Baile invite Michael along with them to play a round of golf. After the round they return to a home in the village for an alcohol-fueled evening of tale spinning and conversation with local players such as Julian Lange (Malcolm McDowell). After hours of drinking Irish whiskey and making analogous statements about how golf is comparable to marriage, Michael joins Shivas as they set out in the wee-hours of the night in search of a mystical savant named Seamus MacDuff.

The book Golf In The Kingdom describes a journey, but almost entirely a mental one, so the challenge for any filmmaker taking on this type of story and subject matter would be to take this inner journey and make it an existential visual experience. The film accomplished this through its astonishing cinematography which was executed by cinematographer Arturo Smith. The imagery in this film is beautiful and establishes a sense of peacefulness throughout. Smith’s camera angles present vast open landscapes that create infinitive vanishing points and symmetrical lines that converge into mystical regions of the mind and the indigenous sound of the sea puts the viewer in a meditative mind state.

Being that Golf In The Kingdom contains no violence, not much action, and no sex some people may find it hard to sit through.  If you haven’t read the book or if you don’t play golf, you might initially feel that the story is difficult to grasp. It only takes about twenty minutes or so to understand that you don’t necessarily need to read the book or be an avid golfer to understand the film. Golf In The Kingdom definitely has a much deeper meaning and it primarily uses the game of golf as a metaphor. The film is very pleasant and director Streitfeld should be saluted for taking on a project concerning metaphysical concepts, especially when so much of American cinema is concerned with anything but that.