PAPILLON - ON THE IMPORTANCE OF NEVER LOSING HOPE... NO MATTER WHAT...

Love is a strange and many splendored thing. Sometimes it comes with a flash of light and a clap of thunder, engulfing us all in an instant. But sometimes it sneaks up on us quietly taking us over so gently we don’t even realise until we have been completely engulfed. This film crept up on me exactly in this way. I started off watching it almost out of a sense of duty – it’s a known classic and I felt as if I should have watched it by now – and for the first hour or so honestly wasn’t that hooked. I ended up deciding that my first tattoo will be the butterfly that gave the film it’s name – the butterfly tattooed on the main character’s chest. I have the pain threshold of a slug when it comes to needles (terrified doesn’t scratch the surface of how they make me feel as anyone who has tried to take blood from me can testify) so this is really something. Allow me to endeavour to explain how.

The film is based on the memoires of the same name of Henri “Papillon” Charriere,  a petty criminal native to France. Convicted (all his life he claimed wrongly) of killing a pimp, he is sent to the penal colony in French Guyana. This is a dismal place where the prisoners are treated little better than animals and the more unruly ones (like Charriere) are kept in solitary confinement for years ( that’s “years”, plural) so that they are “broken” (and often killed). Of course it’s completely possible to get yourself into trouble even in solitary confinement in which case you are deprived from light for up to six months… As you can imagine, Charriere is not an easy prisoner by a long shot. Two things keep him alive and (relatively) sane: his friend Dega who is a renowned forger and a man of means who can make *ehm* connections even in this most dismal of jails and his dogged obsession with escaping. The trouble is that this place is specifically designed so, as the guard so succinctly puts it, France can “wash her hands” of the men and dispose of them. For ever. It is going to take one hell of a lot more than determination for Papillon to escape…

You may have made the analogy already. And to tell the truth, yes,  in places the film has that distinct feel one gets from “escape from POW camps” type tales that were so popular around the time of the 2^nd World War. You know, completely disparate characters pulling together against a common brutal enemy and almost impossible odds. The fact that we have Steve McQueen (who was the lead in The Great Escape ten years before this film was made) in the title role does nothing to alleviate this analogy. Of course genre-wise, it’s your basic buddy-movie really. The strong decisive “masculine” one (Steve McQueen) and the more effeminate, “scaredy” one who “gets things done” aka Dustin Hoffman as Dega. Technically the film is brilliant in so many ways. One of my particular favourites was that beautiful if slightly jarring contrast between the paradise island of French Guyana and the brutality of the colony. And to me, to be absolutely honest, this film stuck out with its story, more than anything else…

First of all, a tiny bit of research straight away proved what I strongly suspected: it is widely presumed that the stories Charriere tells as his life story partly come from other prisoners. You could very well argue that the story is a bit like a swashbuckling pirate story. And I do not mean that in a disrespectful way. It’s just one of those things where when you look at the list of misfortunes that befalls the hero, it is almost numerically impossible for one single person to be THAT unfortunate. But then again, I don’t think the fact that it didn’t happen to a single person detracts from their force – considering they were probably true. I’m pretty sure 6 month blackouts happened as did solitary confinement for years on end along with God knows what else besides…  I mean these stories are unbelievable, but the truth often is stranger than fiction…

And secondly, just because an event is based on reality but doesn’t match up to it 100% must we, in every single case, wag our fingers and dismiss it because it’s not “telling the truth”? This is a story about the amazing capacity human beings have to find inner strength and keep up hope. And shall I tell you something else? I don’t even think it’s that important whether Papillon made it to freedom or not…  (SPOILER ALERT!) What matters is, when he is put on Devil’s Island – a minimum security branch of the colony where the prisoners are pretty much left to their own devices on a tiny island surrounded by shark- infested waters and nowhere to launch a boat from Papillon, who is now old and grey and not a little insane after 5 extra years in solitary confinement, STILL hasn’t given up. While Degas (who has somehow landed himself on the same island) is happy to settle in and concentrate on growing carrots, Papillon is still plotting… Now call it obsession or madness if you will, I think Papillon’s tireless bids for freedom speaks to something in all of us. You know. The part that secretly “knows” that one day you will be famous. You will be rich. You will have that red Ferrari. The entire world may be telling you that that plan, whatever it is, is very probably going to end in heartache. Outwardly you agree. Inwardly, there is a tiny voice inside insistently telling you to keep plugging at it. Papillon is the story of a man who never, never lost that voice. And I think this is a far more important message than any other the film may or could contain.

I mean, look at it this way. As I write this review, Holocaust Remembrance day is almost upon us. I just finished watching a documentary about British Holocaust Survivors. They site a lot of different “ingredients” for survival in those most horrific times, blind luck being one. But the second? Optimism. A sense of humour. And if that doesn’t tell you something about what it takes to survive in this world, I don’t know what will…   

OSCAR SEASON MUSINGS AND A DISCUSSION ON EMOTIONAL CINEMA : "12 YEARS A SLAVE"

Well. With the Oscar® season now officially upon us with the nominations and the dates set, what remains for us movie buffs is to discuss the nominees and put the finishing touches to our own guesses as who this year’s little gold men will go to. One cannot, of course, guess everything. But one thing seems pretty certain from where I’m sitting, judging from all the discussion it has raised alone, 12 Years A Slave will be walking away with some awards on March the 2^nd. So, in my quest to get up to date with the Oscar ®buzz this year, this is where I started.

I just want to add a quick parenthesis here and add: Man, I missed actually going to the cinema! Watching films from home is just so easy these days thanks to various different platforms enabled by 21^st century technology. I have, in the process discovered one of my favourite cinemas to date : The Screen On the Green in Angel. I loved the “double seaters” complete with little foot stools for couples, the café / bar INSIDE the screening room itself and the fact that the toilets led straight off the screening room itself – allowing one to nip in and out quickly and discretely J I know I digress but just… The whole experience was great. I mean sure, the film would not be any less great if I had watched it at home in my jammies but… The whole experience was awesome. Seriously. Look up your local independent cinema. Go to it more often. You’ll be pleasantly surprised; especially if, like me, you’re lucky enough to be able to go during “office hours”.

But I digress. The film. Quite. Now, you probably have, if nothing a vague idea of what goes on in the film. But let me quickly go through it anyway. Solomon Northup was an accomplished violin player who lived in New York in the mid-19^th century. He was a black man, but a free man as he was lucky enough to be born in “the north”. And he was living a quiet life with his family, his beloved wife and 2 small children until a business deal that seems almost too good to be true has an unexpected… Backlash… Kidnapped, taken south and sold into slavery, Solomon has to wait 12 years before any real hope of salvation comes his way. In the meanwhile, through his memoires, we follow him move from master to master, plantation to plantation and fight to keep his sanity… And his life…

Steve McQueen and script writer John Ridley use Northup’s autobiography to cast an unblinking gaze on the utter horrors of slavery in the 19^th century. Northup is passed on from pillar to post much like a piece of furniture and virtually no consideration for even his most basic need and comforts. Once on the market, the rest is purely pot – luck. You could end up with a kind and fair master like Ford (Benedict Cumbarbach – incidentally I was so sure for some reason he would be the “mean” master; I think he would make an excellent villain. Oh well. That’s for another film I guess). But even so you had no guarantee that the overseers you were made to work under would be just as kind. Paul Dano is beyond brilliant as Tibeats, Ford’s overseer. Tibeats is a typical, small-minded and mean middle-management figure. You know the type. That particularly mean boss who always has plenty of snide comments but no constructive criticism on your work. The one who is on the lookout to chip off your breaks and benefits whenever he can. Yeah. Except Tibeats can actually kill the people he is overseeing and get away with it. But then… Then he is moved on to Epps (Michael Fassbinder). We, along with poor Solomon, thought Tibeats was bad. Suffice it to say compared to Epps, he is a fluffy kitten with a bow round its neck. But I will let you discover the delightful Master Epps and the way he runs his plantation in your own good time.

12 years a slave will, without a shadow of a doubt, grab you by the gut and not let go until 2 and whatever hours later. I defy you not to cry. Hand on heart, even the slightly “Deus ex machine” ending of the film completely eclipses your attention (I will get to this in a second). At this point, I have actually read reviews that criticise the film, and if not the film, the fact that there is not enough intellectual involvement in films like this and that the "tear jerker" nature of the film is a bit of an "easy way out"  (Click here for a particularly fine example of this school of thought). I mean, there is some truth in this. I will fully admit that even as I sat in the dark crying my eyes out, I knew exactly what was coming in the end and I loved the fact that I was right. And that is not the mindset of an “intellectually engaged” critic of the movie. Lets get back to the Deus ex Machina bit. I mean, ok, I do get that it would take a large dose of chance for Northup to get out of the condition he was in. But still… A chance encounter with a stranger (I’m talking about Brad Pitt’s character) and “puff”, 12 years of agony at an end…  It would possibly be more realistic if, instead of – or possibly after – his reunion with his family, we at least saw something of his struggle in the courts and his ultimate failure to prosecute anyone who had harmed him. But no, the emotional reunion with his family is the end of the film and Northup’s later struggles are only seen in writing on a black screen just before the credits. I mean yes, add all those in too and we’d have a film 3,5 hours long… But would it maybe push us to think more about the political system of the time? One of the reasons Northup couldn’t have justice is the fact that the colour of his skin prevented him from testifying against a white man. Another fact that potentially gets washed away in our floods of tears at the finale.

So. I’m landing on the side that argues that 12 Years a Slave should be less emotional and more intellectual, is that it? Well… That leads me to another question though. Is it the obligatory function of all art to make us think and nothing else? Ah, now there’s a discussion for you. I would argue, no. Sure, art has a duty to educate the masses if nothing else by using the power that comes of being so “widely spread”. But it has another function. To make us feel. Art is primarily an emotional creature and from there springs its beauty; if art didn’t make us feel passionate and involved, if it didn’t sweep us off our feet from time to time, well… All art would be like those French films that are “meant” to make you feel disengaged and give “useful” messages. And we all know how popular those are.

So maybe 12 Years A Slave is more emotional than intellectual. Why is this a bad thing? In a world where racism is a sadly common occurrence, it gives a plain message. A message that we clearly needed reminding, seeing that racism is as common as it is: “Racism is a terrible thing”. “Slavery is a terrible thing” and before anything yes there still are people working in conditions approaching slavery, if not the actual thing, in this funny old world of ours. If we don’t have any “actual” messages, well maybe it’s because we haven’t come that far yet, so to speak. Once we can fully grasp that we should treat each other with equal respect regardless of race, sex, colour and creed we can move onto the complicated stuff…  In the meanwhile though, 12 Years a Slave shouts out its message loud and clear. And you should really, really stop and listen if you haven’t already.

AND NOW, THE HARD HITTING COP NOONE MESSES WITH... MEET BULLIT

There are some films that become epitomized with certain genres. It’s a funny phenomenon that. I mean, in this kind of movie the main hero often doesn’t even need much in-depth character analysis or even establishing shots giving us information about him, because even if the face and name may change we know him well really… I can think of many examples of this phenomenon, but the one I have in mind in particular today is a certain kind of crime-thriller from the end of the ‘60s and the beginning of the ‘70s. Our hero is a moody and charismatic individual who doesn’t play by the book. His superiors are bothered by this but let him operate any way he chooses because he is a good cop and gets results. He has an unbendable sense of justice and may be either a serial womanizer or have a long-term relationship but the relationship will be without a doubt problematic. You know him well, right?
In this particular case his name is Lieutenant Frank Bullit (played by a very moody and charismatic Steve McQueen). His superiors tolerate his “not by the book” attitude, the guys he works with are loyal to the bitter end because he has earned their respect as the best in the business. So, when he is assigned as protection detail to a star witness in a major gang-related trial, Bullit reckons it’s no big deal. However, nothing is as simple as it seems, and before Bullit can say “knife”, the witness is dead and one of Bullit’s best men is in hospital, critically injured. His superiors, the prosecutor in particular is baying for blood – and Bullit’s head on a plate. Bullit, however, has only one thing in mind: finding the killers and bringing them all to justice.
Now pray don’t be discouraged by the fact that I have slightly slammed the movie in my opening statement. I mean, the fact that there are many of the same thing knocking around is testament to the fact that whatever it is hit off in the market, right? You may be additionally coaxed by the fact that back in 1968, the film won the Oscar® for Best Editing (although Best Editing does tend to attract movie buffs more than some regular Joe just looking for an evening’s entertainment). On no, without a doubt Bullit is one heck of a good cop flick. Set in San Francisco and peppered with lovely shots of the sweeping hills and old wooden houses common in those parts (back in the ‘60s at any rate), it is quite a spectacle to watch. And speaking of hills, there is of course the famous car chase. Now, this went down in history as one of the best of its kind, and for all the new technical thingamajigs we have to enhance the experience today, I have to admit, they had a point. The chase starts out pretty casually as it were, then the music accelerates as does the speed and as the cars wind up and down the San Francisco hills at what is sometimes a break-neck speed (funny isn’t it how when you say “car chase” you never really think it can mean up or down a hill but on a straight road? It’s what I visualize at any rate), strategically placed point of view shots ( shots where you see the scene directly from the eyes of the character as it were) must have given cinema-goers the impression of being on a fair-ground ride and not a film (Mom actually felt sick watching it – she could never really handle fair-ground rides…). There is nothing like a really good car-chase to get you into gear, and this one is a jewel in the crown of Bullit. Shame it doesn’t have much else to say about itself. One thing that is mentioned on the DVD cover and that does deserve praise – credit where it is due – is the film’s realism. Well think about it, if you actually were a cop trying to nail big-time mobsters, I sincerely doubt your day actually would be dotted with funny anecdotes and witty repartee that is so essential to sub-plots in such movies. No, the film is concentrated on one thing only, the main plot. But then again so is Bullit, so that actually ties in rather nicely… I guess what I am trying to say is that the film has a sort of “sparse” feel to it. But that’s all right. Bullit is a man of few words, out to get the killers. Any other kind of story would… Well, feel wrong…