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The director Toby Amies\u2019s documentary \u201cIn the Court of the Crimson King\u201d is part road chronicle and part retrospective, and captures King Crimson, the adventurous British rock ensemble, at what may be the end of its existence. Robert Fripp<\/a>, for years the band\u2019s sole original member, has strongly suggested that its 2021 tour would be its last. (It hasn\u2019t toured since.)<\/p>\n One of the originators of the subgenre called progressive rock or art rock, King Crimson is, depending on whom you ask, either impossibly pretentious or startlingly adventurous. Fripp, an endlessly thoughtful and meticulously articulate guitarist, is the group\u2019s most tireless and paradoxical explainer in the film. He\u2019s fond of pronouncements like, \u201cFor silence to become audible, it requires a vehicle. And that vehicle is music.\u201d<\/p>\n At one point Fripp describes his experience in the band from 1969 to 2016 as \u201cwretched.\u201d What changed in 2016? He put together a group of stellar musicians who did as he requested. The film features their thoughts along with interviews with past members who had strong differences with Fripp.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n While the YouTube videos Fripp and his wife, the singer Toyah Willcox, began making during the pandemic reveal the guitarist as a mild-mannered, eccentric, uxorious madcap, he can come off like an egghead martinet in the context of the band he has helmed for half a century. But he is as hard on himself as he is on anyone else, practicing the guitar four to five hours a day and subjecting himself to other forms of discipline such as taking a cold shower in the morning: \u201cYour body doesn\u2019t want to go under a cold shower,\u201d he says in the film. \u201cSo you\u2019re saying to your body, \u2018Do as you\u2019re told.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Bill Rieflin offers another perspective on the band, as a musician who chose to spend his last years alive touring with Crimson. He died of cancer<\/a> in 2020. His devotion renders Fripp\u2019s adages about the sacred nature of music-making palpable.<\/p>\n In the Court of the Crimson King: King Crimson at 50<\/strong>
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. In theaters.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n