The Bounty
Bounty fails to consolidate properly each of the formula’s ingredients to offer anything special or memorable to the audience it is so eager to capture. The Bounty: Directed by: Roger Donald son. Producer: Bernard Williams. Screen play: Robert Bolt. Director of photo graphy: Arthur Ibbetson. Editor: Tony Lawson. Production designer: John Graysmark. Music: Vangelis. Sound recordist:. John Mitchell. Cast: Mel Gibson (Fletcher Christian), Anthony Hopkins (Captain William Bligh), Laurence Olivier (Admiral Hood), Edward Fox (Captain Gresham), Daniel Day-Lewis (Mr Fryer), Wi Kuki Kaa (King Twnah), Tevaite Vernette (Mauatua), Bernard Hill (Cole), Philip Davis (Young), Liam Neeson (Churchill). Production com pany: Dino De Laurentiis. Distributor: Hoyts Distribution. 35 mm. 132 mins. U.S. 1984.
Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes Raffaele Caputo Hugh Hudson’s Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes is a film undeniably characteristic of today’s filmmaking, following the line of production values of recent “ mile stones” such as The Elephant Man, Gandhi and his own Chariots of Fire. Greystoke’s strict adherence to the literary source; location shooting in the Cameroons, the next state down from Gabon where Burroughs sets his story; the transportation of natural plants, trees, vines and rocks from the Cameroons to Elstree Studios to recreate the jungle; the world-wide search for unknowns to the screen; and the arduous seven months training of make-up apes with real apes to imitate precise sounds and movements on the screen all reflect the current values in filmmaking of sensitivity, seriousness and authenticity at any cost. Not surprising, Greystoke’s good intentions are received with much enthusiasm: the “ authentic Tarzan” , the “ real Tarzan” , the “ thinking man’s Tarzan” , the “ definitive jungle film” and the only Tarzan film “ true” to Burroughs. Yet, for all this enthusi asm, and with the exception of the splendid beauty of the jungle sequences and some of the more endearing apes, Greystoke is largely a hollow film. No one can discount the dominance of past Tarzan films in popular memory, nor the fact that Johnny Weissmuller still remains the actor most identified with Tarzan. So, with this new Tarzan film, one was curious to see the balance or interplay between the expectations engendered by the Bgrade Tarzan films and this supposedly faithful depiction of Edgar Rice Bur roughs’ Tarzan o f the Apes. However, the balance being sought was instead imbalanced, tipping the scales against any slight appreciation of past Tarzan films. To begin with, there is no “ me Tarzan, you Jane” , no Cheetah and no beating of the breast with the familiar “ Ahh-ah-ahhh” resounding from the crest of a waterfall. Even the popular name, Tarzan, is refused men tion throughout the film. More annoy ing is that Hudson neither acknow 268 — August CINEMA PAPERS
Greystoke
makes distinct civilized man from primate. D’Arnot re-establishes the difference in a reflection erased in the earlier scene by the ape-mother and human child. The film re-echoes the hair theme, partly by counterpointing the cultured and groomed lands of Greystoke Manor with the wild, dense overgrowth of the jungle and partly when Tarzan, as the aristocratic Lord of Greystoke ^a title inherited, not earned), takes to identifying with two primate substitutes: a long-haired and low-cast stable boy (Emanuelle Obeya), and his regressively-minded grandfather (Ralph Richardson), who, on greeting his grandson, is seen un shaven and with hair dishevelled. But beyond these points the threads get lost. Instead of pursuing the possi bilities of the mirror and razor motifs, and the central theme of hair, Hudson tends to go on a search for any curi ously meaningful imagery or artifacts he can find, in order to make Grey stoke, in his own words, “ much more profound than Chariots of Fire” . Nor does he seem to understand the work ing of these themes in Burroughs’ novel. For instance, an early scene that could have tied together a certain set of relations becomes, instead, groundless and inadequate. The scene is one in which D’Arnot and Tarzan, on their The adolescent Tarzan (Eric Langlois) reacts with fear and anger at the killing of his journey back to England, come across primate mother Kala (Ailsa Berk). Hugh Hudson’s Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, the European settlement of Chiromo, Lord o f the Apes. and spend the night in a sleezy saloon infested with European outcasts. ledges an understanding of, nor dares Ivory Coast and here Lord Clayton D’Arnot informs Tarzan, “ This is not to play with, the central concerns so recounts, in voice-over, their survival the world Jean, just the edge of it” , as well embedded within the popular from that time until the birth of their the inhabitants of the saloon are not tradition. For instance, any one of the child six months later, in a clearing unwilling to make clear their criminal Johnny Weissmuller films reveals a dominated by apes. There, at almost nature and undesirability, together struggle between unfair capitalist one and the same moment, a set of with the attributive hair growth of this profiteering, represented by the carefully balanced events occur: the “ edge of the world” stage. expedition, and the Eden-like harmony birth of Tarzan; the death of an apeThis scene is clearly and directly of the jungle. It is profiteering, be it child; the death of Tarzan’s parents lifted from the original, though, one for elephant tusks, lost cities or game (one immediately after the other); and should say, not all too clearly and not hunting, which disturbs the natural the adoption of Tarzan by the childless all too directly. One can imagine the harmony and needs to be overcome. ape, sensitive to the youngster’s cries. scene’s logical place within Burroughs’ But it does not end here, for there is a The film continues with Tarzan’s schema, providing an elemental move particular moral lesson in all this. On a growth and acceptance among the ape ment from primitiveness to civility, comic level, Cheetah sometimes per colony, beginning with a scene in and the attendant and intermediary forms this function; at other times, it is which both ape-mother and human stages of that movement. But there is a member of the expedition. child erase apparent difference by some confusion as to what motivates This is never more clearly pro muddling each other’s reflection in a this scene in the film and what it moti nounced than with the introduction of waterpool, and concluding when vates. D’Arnot’s statement hits one Boy in the 1939 Tarzan finds a Son, Tarzan (Christopher Lambert) chal with a kind of poignancy and defini and his subsequent characterization. lenges and triumphantly defeats the tiveness, without really making any Boy is often an intermediary figure be brutish and dictatorial ape leader, thing definite. Hudson fails to convey tween the two poles; he represents a White Eyes (John Alexander), thereby the manner by which a particular stage certain innocence capable of being earning his title, Lord of the Apes. of hair growth relates to a particular seduced by the allure of materialism. But it is not until the appearance of world, a criminal and undesirable Under Tarzan’s protective wing, Boy is another white man that the order is world. The scene somehow loses out an initiate who, by the end of the film, disturbed, and the more interesting because Hudson seems to have the has learnt a lesson: there are various and telling elements of Burroughs’ terms, but not the strings, to tie them principles one can use as a justification story tend to emerge. Tarzan chances together. for exploring the jungle, the least of upon the wounded Belgian explorer, After this scene, a particular mood, which is for unbridled profit. (As Phillippe D’Arnot (Ian Holm), the an uneasiness, sets in. There is, on the fillers for the lower half of the double only surviving member of an expedi one hand, Tarzan’s discomfort with bill, how “ sgrious” can one get?) tion attacked by Pygmies. While civilized society, sometimes tragic, The marked absence of any of these Tarzan nurtures D’Arnot back to sometimes comic. Although the comic concerns in Greystoke does no more health, D’Arnot not only introduces situations and possibilities are than belittle the status of the popular Tarzan to language and his true expected ones, arising from the clash ized Tarzan, recalling, in some ways, identity, which he refuses to accept at of Tarzan’s jungle manners with those Burroughs’ disapproval of the Holly first, but teaches the ape man the of a pompous, aristocratic lifestyle wood adaptations. Any reference to, crucial difference between himself and (Tarzan sipping soup straight from the or identification with, previous his ape family, which is, believe it or bowl or hooting ape sounds while Tarzans is taboo in Greystoke, giving not, hair. taken by the excitement of a square way to a “ profound” and “ serious” Burroughs’ Tarzan o f the Apes dance), there is, on the other hand, attempt at realistically portraying the obviously was written in the wake of another uneasiness. Burroughs story. But whether in fact it Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Greystoke emerges out of a spirit of is faithful to the polemics of the If one recalls the diagram illustrative concern with high-art values currently original is another thing altogether. of Darwin’s theory, what is most dis embroiled in filmmaking (a situation Hudson seems to follow the events tinctive about the transition from the which had its beginnings in the late of the novel very closely. The film figure of the ape to that of man is the 1950s as failing film audiences opens in 1885 at Greystoke Manor, stages of hair loss. What D’Arnot required the extinction of the double where Tarzan’s parents, Lord Jack offers Tarzan, before departing the bill and the B-grade feature, and a Clayton (Paul Geoffrey) and his preg jungle for the civilized world and then swing to expensive, block-buster pro nant wife, Lady Alice (Cheryl Camp again upon arrival at Greystoke ductions). At the same time, Greystoke bell), are preparing to leave for Africa. Manor, is a shaving razor and a has to escape identification with the En route, they are shipwrecked on the mirror, as that which specifically pulp quality (the B-grade effect) of a