Wrath in "Under the Volcano"

Roger Ebert considered Ikiru--Kurosawa's masterpiece that graces the upper left corner of this blog--"one of the few movies that might actually be able to inspire someone to lead their life a little differently."  I don't know that such praise can be heaped upon a film that succeeds at this in "scared straight" instead of uplifting fashion, but if there is such a film, that film is Under the Volcano.

Wrath in Under the Volcano (1984)

 

 

Merriam-Webster defines wrath as "strong, vengeful anger or indignation," and when we meet Geoffrey Firmin (Albert Finney) on the Day of the Dead,1938 in Cuernavaca, Mexico, this sin is not immediately apparent. He wanders the festivities in a tuxedo, and sunglasses at night, on his way to a Red Cross banquet. He meets his friend Dr. Vigil for a drink, and soon enough they are at the banquet, helping themselves to the bar. We learn Geoffrey is recently retired (quite possibly removed) from the position of British consul, and despite his apparent alcoholism, he has a wit about him that would be hard to match. Upon introduction to the new German consul, he quickly dispels the recent Munich Agreement between Britain and Germany, a disillusionment that easily explains why he's no longer fit for service, or perhaps vice-versa.

 

Geoffrey speaks of his recent divorce. He only learned of it by letter, as his wife left him a year previously. After being shooed out of the banquet, he ends up in a church with the doctor, who urges him to pray for his wife's return. After rebuking the doctor, "It's like asking the Fairy God Mother for three wishes," the doctor prays for him. To no one in particular, Geoffrey finally admits "I'm dying without you. Come back to me, Yvonne."

 

And the very next morning, Yvonne (Jacqueline Bisset) returns.

 

What would be the turning point towards redemption in a romantic story is instead but a trigger for Geoffrey's wrath. Geoffrey's half brother Hugh (Anthony Andrews) returns the same day from a trip to Mexico City, and it's quickly revealed that he and Yvonne had an affair before she left, and that Geoffrey is well aware of it. Though long past and deeply regretted by both Yvonne and Hugh, Geoffrey's elation at his wife's return is quickly consumed by this old wound.

 

So begins Geoffrey's death. Enjoying a leisurely day, Hugh and Yvonne catch up, with Hugh revealing his regrets at leaving the Spanish Civil War behind, and Geoffrey tells stories from World War I. Where Hugh displays vigor and an eye toward the future, Geoffrey revels in what's past. His cutting remarks toward Hugh and Yvonne about their affair finally take their toll. When confronted, it's a confession without repentance:
 

 

 "Hell, my preference. I choose hell. Hell is my natural habitat." 

 

Under the volcano, indeed.

Wrath, or its lesser form resentment, has been described as injuring oneself and expecting the person one resents to hurt. The cliché is not quite the perfect parable, for often it does hurt others. Watching wrath consume Geoffrey is painful to us, and we barely know him. There is much to the story--Geoffrey's alcoholism, the war that he knows is coming, the miracle of his wife's return tempered by the simultaneous return of her former lover--but it's all window dressing. Geoffrey won't forgive, "not in this world," and it kills him.

Under the Volcano was one of John Huston's last films, and displays the craftsmanship of a master. Malcolm Lowry's book was considered unfilmable (I own the novel, and after two false starts I'm curious whether it's even readable), and Huston delivered. He lived many years in Mexico, and from Treasure of Sierra Madre (1948) to Night of the Iguana (1964) to this, always paid tribute to its beauty without sacrificing anything. In addition to Finney's performance, Bisset and Andrews are outstanding, as is the entire supporting cast.

Forgiveness is a most difficult concept to Christians and non-Christians alike. Unlike a character as far out as Harold in The Long Good Friday, empathy with Geoffrey is easier. Unfortunately, empathy with his position is, too. We all harbor wounds at one time or another, rationalizing wrath with ease. Indeed, many of us believe there are sins unforgivable in this world, and treat wrath as a symbiont rather than a parasite.

Few of us will suffer as Geoffrey, but we only deceive ourselves if we believe our wrath is any less dangerous than his.



Pride in "The Long Good Friday"

The average running time for a feature film is somewhere between 1.5 and 3 hours, with the higher end of that range becoming all too common.  Especially in summer popcorn fare, movies that pull the average up do so by having so much to do, and often very little to say (here's looking at you, Star Trek: Into Darkness). But when I look at many of what I consider great films, complexity is certainly not a requirement. Indeed, with only two hours or so in which to tell a story, a single strong theme can reach the greatest heights of cinema.

 

I aim to establish this with a new series of posts, beginning here.  I will discuss films that center around one of each of the so-called seven deadly sins - greed, lust, wrath, envy, gluttony, pride, and sloth. Most importantly, these films show just why, even in practical terms if not religious, these sins can indeed destroy.

 

Pride in The Long Good Friday (1980)

 

American viewers (well, over the age of 25) likely recognize Bob Hoskins immediately from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, though he's certainly had a distinguished career otherwise.  For me, The Long Good Friday is the jewel in the crown.  To get going with, among other things, the theme, enjoy this entrance:

Hoskins plays Harold Shand, a gangster who runs nearly the entire London underworld in a criminal organization referred to as "the Corporation."  Returning from a trip to America (depicted in the scene above), Shand intends to woo the American mafia into investing in the redevelopment of the London waterfront in preparation for the Olympics. The move stands to make billions, and make the Corporation legitimate. Unlike the conflicted, somewhat reluctant Michael Corleone in The Godfather series, the legitimacy is of far less import to Shand than the money and power that come with it. 

Shand has plenty invested in the appearance of legitimacy, though, or at least a certain luxurious flare. His wife Victoria (Helen Mirren) is well bred, and practically his consigliore. His henchmen all dress impeccably,  and drive him around in various luxury automobiles. He has a yacht and a penthouse apartment.  The yacht is where Harold begins his return, showing not just his new American friends the prospective property but high-ranking police officers and other members of London's elite.

And then everything goes wrong.

While waiting for Harold's mother to finish Good Friday services at church, one of Harold's men is blown up in his Rolls Royce.  At about the same time, Harold's man (and close friend) Colin is stabbed to death. Infuriated, but also bewildered at who would be so brazen as to attack him, Harold sets his men to find the culprits, expecting it to end very quickly. With the police in his pocket, he also enlists their help. But it soon becomes apparent that the killers aren't afraid and won't quit until Harold is dead.

I'm certainly not immune to clichés here at Cinematic Leisure, but this is one of the few films I can shamelessly describe as "dripping with atmosphere." The production was certainly not high-budget, but it combines music and mis en scene around its players (an outstanding supporting cast that includes Pierce Brosnan in his first cinematic role) that makes the entire film feel authentic. The violence is not too frequent (certainly not by today's standards), but remains visceral even to modern viewers. We know from the outset that these are bad people we're watching, yet when we see the acts they're capable of we're still shocked. The film does not miss a single beat, and is one of the heights of the gangster genre.
 
Though the plot is complex, and deliberately bewildering at the beginning of the film, thematically The Long Good Friday is quite simple. Harold's crowning characteristic is pride, and it's his undoing. From the moment he's threatened, he exudes confidence in his eventual victory. As it becomes apparent that he's up against the most powerful enemy he's ever crossed, he never waivers. To him, his only weakness is not knowing who his enemy is. When he finally learns this and is told honestly that he cannot win, Harold responds with rage and violence that we'd only attribute to barbarians.

Pride not only undoes Harold in his last days, but led to the situation in the first place. He's long been lord of the London underworld, and does not even know the workings of many corners of his empire. As he works to solve the "little" problem, he believes he can keep the Americans on the hook, even after they nearly fall victim to one of the attacks.

Of course, my arguments cannot be completed without spoilers, and this is a must-see film whether one is interested in the gangster genre or not. Though extremely portrayed, we recognize Harold's hubris in people we know and work with. It's better flipside, confidence, can indeed take us far, but certainly too far. 

The Long Good Friday is currently streaming on Netflix. If you subscribe, it should be at the top of your queue.

 

The Vanished Empire

A few months ago, while composing a blog post to memorialize a Cinematic Leisure misadventure the likes of which I promise will never happen again, I made a quick reference to The Vanished Empire (2008). I had recently (around Christmas) watched the film on Netflix streaming, and would include it with my list of great films worth streaming. (Note: I have not recently verified that list, so many selections may not be currently available.)

 

Vanished Empire deserves some Cinematic Leisure because months later, it's still following me. Haunting me may be a better word. It is easily one of my current top five recommendations for foreign films, and up against a category so broad that it includes Fellini and Kurosawa--we can honestly end the list right there to make the point--that's about as favorable a rating as I can bestow.

 

Set mostly in 1970s Moscow, Aleksandr Lyapin plays Sergei, a young man with his eyes set on trendy western clothes, western music, women, and having a good time. Sergei can afford the clothes, music, and good times because his grandfather, a famous archeologist who lives with Sergei's family, has an extensive rare book collection that Sergei shamelessly sells piece-by-piece to a store in town. Along with his best friends Stepan (Egor Baranovskiy) and others, Sergei attends the University and rather than study he spends his time pursuing the goal money can't buy: love. Or something like it.

 

Vanished Empire immediately struck me with a shocking feeling of empathy, much like Dazed and Confused, the quintessential American film about white 1970s suburban middle class youth. With those qualifiers--white middle class suburbia--teenage ignorance transcends any decade you put it in.  American Graffiti drives the point home for the '60s (albeit with far more romance), and the sole season of Freaks and Geeks does so for the '80s.  The '90s? Well, along with the early 2000s that's my point of reference.

 

But to watch such a story in Soviet Russia? To be sure, this takes place in the same era when the Soviets were expelling Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. More importantly, they did so because Solzhenitsyn's books--specifically One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, The Gulag Archipelago, and The First Circle--exposed and threatened a dictatorship that sent its "criminals" to die some of the worst prisons imaginable. Though Sergei and his friends are well-connected and far more equal than the average citizen of the Soviet Union, the film nonetheless shows the shadow of that vanished empire: Sergei spends his time waiting in a very long line when beer is made available, must find his black market western music from dealers in the park (leading to hilarious results in one instance), and, when after a somewhat clandestine rock concert some marijuana is passed around, the fear portrayed by one of Sergei's friends is palpable.  Such a crime might not be overlooked even for the privileged.

 

Once the shock wears away, Sergei's story is a familiar. He's young and he's reckless, selling off his heritage, fooling around when things don't immediately fall into place with his girlfriend, and ignoring--even defying--his studies. It is only when Sergei reaps what he sows that he starts to get the point. He is ultimately redeemed, but not without losing his own little empire.

 

It is ultimately the aforementioned culture shock that I believe justifies my haunted feeling. This is not to say that Vanished Empire makes me sympathetic to the Soviet regime, but it certainly shatters many notions about at least some Soviet citizens. Like German reunification--portrayed in Goodbye, Lenin!--not everything went smoothly when the Soviet Union collapsed, especially, I assume, for those who had it comparatively good. It is understandable, leaving aside the gulags and other "policies" that teenagers of the time had nothing to do with, that 1970s Moscow may be as romantically remembered by some Russians as George Lucas remembered American Graffiti. A romance that is, I daresay, justified.

 

What to make of that is perhaps worth a book, certainly far more than a blog post. But the immediate point is, and we could use a little trademark snark for this post, if Vanished Empire can get a little more traffic on Netflix and the "popular-on-Netflix"-labeled The Dictator a little less, we'll all be better off.