The King of Marvin Gardens starts with a story – a quiet, emotional retelling of the protagonist’s childhood experience seeing his grandfather die, a traumatic experience, made only worse by the fact that is was preventable. A few minutes later, we see him return home, his grandfather as lively as ever. The story was a lie, built on deception and false information, for the sake of his own endeavours to achieve fame and recognition, and establish a standing as someone with depth and experience. This is the life of David Staebler (Jack Nicholson), who hosts a late-night radio program, which is composed mostly of his own philosophical ramblings. Deception is in Staebler’s bloodline, as evident by his beckoning to Atlantic City, where his brother Jason (Bruce Dern) needs his help in a get-rich-quick scheme which would allegedly see them become the owners of a beautiful Hawaiian island, which Jason hopes to turn into a luxury resort and casino, where the men can get rich and enjoy the company of Jason’s associates, Sally (Ellen Burstyn) and Jessica (Julia Anne Robinson), whose relationship extends further than a pair of pageant queens, past and present. Nothing is as it seems, and David soon finds himself in the centre of the very kind of convoluted philosophical nightmare he ponders on a nightly basis to an unknown, anonymous audience, and he is suddenly thrust into the same world of existential dishonesty that he peddled professionally, and is now slowly encroaching into his personal life.

The King of Marvin Gardens is a strange film – a psychotic blend of 3 Women and Ingmar Bergman, with the dream-like surrealism of the former, and the intense character-driven drama of the latter. It is a film that seems almost unimpeachable – and regardless of whether one adores or abhors it (both perfectly valid responses to a film as audacious as this), to consider this as anything less than a major achievement of the New Hollywood movement would seem disingenuous. Bob Rafelson hardly receives the adulation he deserves as one of the pioneers of the movement, mainly because he seems to lack the refined tact of the likes demonstrated even in the earliest days of Martin Scorsese, William Friedkin and Francis Ford Coppola. What Rafelson lacks in coherency he makes up for in sheer audacity, as shown in The King of Marvin Gardens, which lingers on as an uneasy memory long after the fact – and it is almost a revelatory experience, because even in the temporal cinematic moment in which it takes place, this film seems out of place – it is an eccentric, often extremely outlandish dark comedy that is defined almost entirely by its unconventional idiosyncracies, and while some may find the approach this film takes quite intolerable, the film remains one of the most unique and brilliant, and tragically under-praised, films of the 1970s, and something that demands reevaluation as an essential work of New Wave Hollywood.

In a career spanning over half a century, Jack Nicholson has clocked in some extraordinary performances, establishing himself as one of the greatest actors to ever work in film. Everyone seems to have their own unique opinion as to what constitutes Nicholson’s very best – and most will agree that it is one of his numerous performances from the 1970s – personally, one can never go wrong with The King of Marvin Gardens as one of his finest moments, for a number of reasons. Not only does it allow Nicholson to work with a director that helped forge his iconic career, it also sees the actor take on one of his most unconventional roles – David Staebler is far from the Nicholson characters that are most prominently remembered – he is reserved, cerebral and quiet, with the more exuberant performances coming on behalf of his screen partners. Nicholson is remarkable in The King of Marvin Gardens – the film is bookended by extraordinary monologues that are just brimming with raw, evocative emotion that sees Nicholson at his most nuanced. It is such a simple performance, but as we would come to learn by looking at his career as a whole, as entertaining as Nicholson can be when he is unhinged, his finest moments come in the more subtle work. At the outset, Nicholson seems to be disappearing into the background, especially considering he has to appear in the same film as two excessive performances, but as the film progresses, David begins to take shape as a character, with Nicholson’s portrayal of baby boomer ennui being truly unforgettable.

Bruce Dern is such a great actor, but he hardly receives the adoration that his career warrants – the perennial supporting presence that leaves a lasting impression without ever being the focus, Dern’s talents often aren’t utilized to their full potential. The King of Marvin Gardens is one of the few exceptions to this rule, with Dern taking one half of the central duo, and with the exception of some memorable supporting turns, this is Dern’s best performance, and not only because it allows him to occupy the rare leading role, but because it plays off his natural strengths as an actor. He is hardly a conventional leading man – his skills range from cranky to slimy to malicious, and the character of Jason Staebler embodies each and every one of them. A weasel of a man, he is a manipulator, an individual well-trained in the art of the con, someone with a lifetime of experience in deceit and dishonesty, regretting absolutely none of it. A loud, brash and brilliant performance on behalf of Dern, who takes on a character so profoundly unlikable, but still strangely so charismatic, whose metaphysical journey is nearly as compelling as David’s, despite the fact that there is absolutely nothing about this character that demands our sympathy or regard. This could be a testament to Dern’s marvellous ability to embody every aspect of this character with a certain obsequious elegance, or to how Rafelson and co-screenwriter Jacob Brackman constructed the character, as an enigmatic sycophant on his own mission to achieve greatness without any moral grounding. Dern is just brilliant, and his performance in The King of Marvin Gardens is both wonderful and tragic – it makes us wonder about the possibilities had Dern been given more leading roles, but also reminded us of the weird and wonderful places Dern is willing to take his performances as a reliable character actor. The King of Marvin Gardens is a tremendous showcase for his unique talents, and it shows how brilliantly deft he is as an actor.

Taken on its most basic terms, The King of Marvin Gardens is a fascinating character study, especially when we focus on the central theme of brotherhood, or more broadly about the concept of family. The central quartet in The King of Marvin Gardens are taken from two familial strands and form a de facto unit that seems to resemble some warped vision of the nuclear family – the ambitious patriarch (Jason), the past-her-prime but loving matriarch (Sally), the audacious and intelligent young intellectual (David) and the beautiful ingenue hoping to become America’s Sweetheart (Jessica) – and this dynamic gives the film a certain warmth, as well as allowing it to venture off into quite a dark territory, exploring the relationships between these characters and this proverbial family unit, with each of their insecurities, flaws and shortcomings being put on clear display. How does someone like Jason reconcile the fact that he has enough audacity to make him a very rich man, but absolutely none of the self-awareness or authentic ability to make it true? What if David isn’t as smart or profound as he is, and he is just a depressed pseudo-intellectual rambling on nightly about issues no one seems to find particularly moving, to an audience that possibly doesn’t even exist? Sally needs to watch as her step-daughter comes close to achieving the ambitions she had, and her mechanism to resolve this isn’t to build Jessica up, but rather to drag her down to the sordid depths of her own downfall. The King of Marvin Gardens looks at four distinct characters with their own individual issues and unites them under the common goal of portraying them as a dysfunctional family of sorts. It is quite a concept, but one that Rafelson conveys almost effortlessly, with quick-witted dialogue and beautiful filmmaking that truly seems to be focused on exploring the inner machinations of a set of flawed people.

Moving beyond the individual level and looking more broadly, The King of Marvin Gardens questions the American Dream and focuses entirely on a scheme concocted by Jason to make himself rich, without thinking the plan through entirely. It wouldn’t be accurate to call The King of Marvin Gardens an anti-capitalist film in the purest sense, and in many ways it takes the side of the free market, looking at it as a space occupied by audacious dreamers who can’t realize their ambitions because they are controlled by people more powerful – the character of Lewis (played so brilliantly by the incredible Scatman Crothers, who would reunite with Nicholson only a few years later in The Shining, in a role that is the very antithesis of his chilling work here) embodies greed and corruption – an almost invisible but no less malignant force that guides the hand of fate, forcing everything to fall in his favour, regardless of the societal or individual damage it may cause, always being one step ahead of those beneath him, waiting in patient anticipation to strike. Rafelson is hardly a filmmaker we could expect to make a lucid and scathing satire on this concept, but rather a dream-like drama that tries to pervade the social psyche and expose the fragility at the core. Perhaps this is giving him too much credit, but Rafelson is a genuinely gifted filmmaker, and his works were consistently daring and brilliant, and as much as The King of Marvin Gardens may falter in terms of the narrative, his approach to telling this story was noteworthy – just consider the scene where Jason and David try and auction off garbage to a group of old biddies, or when they meet on the beach on horseback, or the gloriously excessive lobster dinner towards the end of the film. The King of Marvin Gardens is as memorable in its visual style as it is in its narrative basis, which makes for some truly compelling cinema, a collected series of strange and fascinating moments forming a delicate but impactful snapshot of an entire generation.

The King of Marvin Gardens was quite an experience – going into it, I don’t think anyone truly knows what to expect. It differs from many New Hollywood films in as many ways as it is aligned – it is raw and gritty, lacking the rugged but polished atmosphere of its contemporaries. It is fragmented in terms of the story and often relishes in the fact that doesn’t make much sense in some instances. It is a film more focused on episodic moments, meditations on the trials and tribulations of its four central characters rather than one single narrative-driven story. It features dynamic performances from its cast, especially from Jack Nicholson and Bruce Dern, who do career-best work in this film, and a sense of rebellious sarcasm to the system that defined the post-Sixties era, a time when the future seemed grim, and anger was the only remedy. The King of Marvin Gardens is a film that needs to be pondered a bit more before anyone can make any definitive final statement on this film, but one thing that can be said without any doubt is that Bob Rafelson made something quite astonishing here, and it joins a very elite group of films that has a perfect ending – a silent projection of two children (assumed to be David and his brother) playing on a beach – perhaps the same beach they consistently visit throughout the film – while their grandfather coughs off-camera, bringing David’s story, and the film as a whole, full-circle. The King of Marvin Gardens is what cinema is supposed to be – beautiful, chaotic, poetic and memorable.