MOSQUITO COAST: YOU BECOME WHAT YOU HATE

Last night I saw the Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren, River Phoenix, Andre Gregory movie, Mosquito Coast, the second time. It was made from a novel by Paul Theroux. I'd seen it several years ago, took it for a simplistic Hollywood allegory and dismissed it. Seeing it last night was by chance more than choice. From the very first scenes it caught my attention, had me thinking I totally missed it first time around. It is self that has changed, not the film. I got the allegory first time, but missed the subtleties that fleshed out the allegory. Ford's character was an American man, a liberal democrat in the time of the novel's writing, in our time today a Teabagger republican. They're both the same at the off-the-deep-end Xtreme. Ever-thang's wrong, aint nothin right. Ford's character had a brilliant mind; he was an obsessive inventor with a passion for fixing things. At the time of the story, he had become obsessive over all that doesn't work in America. He saw dark clouds on the political horizon. He decided to leave the country where nothing works very well anymore, where tv has zombified the population, unable to accept or allow circumstances and others to be what they are. He wanted to be in control, because he knew the right way. His wife, Helen Mirren, became an enabler standing by her man, bearing with his never-ending projects. River Phoenix, his boy, looked up to his dad and became his partner in the projects. The whole family went with him when he decided to leave the country and start over someplace else where he could do it his way.

river phoenix and harrison ford

Their boat took them to the Atlantic coast of Central America, presumably following the chance of water currents to guide them. They found a river and went upriver. It's tropical jungle. The film's theme is going upriver. Ford's character is a thinking man, who, alas, thinks too much. Throughout the story, the hearts of wife and kids want to let go and flow downstream to the ocean and go back home to northern Georgia. He wants to be going upstream. He is a man operating a bulldozer instead of a canoe. His life is an ongoing struggle, which the people around him suffer from, because he never lets up. He is the kind of character who gets in your face when he talks, attempting to convince you he knows more than you do. He sees everything that's wrong with the world. When he left America, he became America. I thought of a spiritual truth I'd learned many years ago, you become what you hate. He left America, hating it, went out to the unimproved world and became America. He called the black people there savages. He wore his family out, and everybody around him. Then the real world of Central American rebels appeared, and from there on his creation self-destructed. He set fire to Andre Gregory's church, and Andre Gregory shot him down, allowing wife and kids to enter the flow and go with it downstream to the sea and to home.

the kids

I saw myself in the story and several particular people I know. Theroux caught the American mind using the fingers of both hands. He caught it like one of those great pass receptions we see about once a year on tv football where the runner leaps into the air as high as he can go, arms extended all the way, hands snatch the ball out of the air. In the microcosm of one man, Ford acted out American history in allegory, thus became America created by his particularly American self-unaware temperament with control issues. An unselfconscious ego and a brilliant mind with little room for heart gives a pretty good description of the American personality in the world of nations. It's testosterone mind that has ruled our government and culture from the beginning that evolved to the War on Drugs (war on the American people), excess border patrol, Faux news and police state. According to Theroux's vision, the self-centered domination of all around Ford's character, by this time America itself, constructs a skyscraper of cards. A breeze of popular rebellion blows through; the attempt to shut down the rebellion sets off a chain-reaction imploding the skyscraper of cards, and shutting down that old testosterone domination, the patriarchy. Wife and kids, the people who live by heart, the greater portion of the population, can now go with their flow and return home to Georgia.

harrison ford, river phoenix, helen mirren

I hear Ray Charles singing "Georgia on my mind." Georgia, the place in the heart they left and returned to, patriarchal ego mind lost along the journey, defeated by itself. He was so obsessed with what was wrong that by the end what was wrong in himself brought him down, setting everybody around him free to return to living by the heart after a bad experience with mind in control. Theroux showed the progression from thought to action, from hating to becoming what you hate. I am glad I learned about becoming what I hate. That shut down hate in me. I used to laugh inside when I'd hear somebody truly racist on a rant, picturing him a black baby in a black teenage girl's arms living with her mama, had to quit school. I don't want to hate a right-wing Teabagger republican, despite seeing what they're doing to my country, because I don't want to be like them. I don't want to hate Rush Limbaugh's mind, because I don't want to become like his mind. I can't hate somebody for being a snitch emeffer, because I don't want to become a snitch emeffer. I don't want to hate Ted Nugent because I don't want to be Ted Nugent, for the same reasons I can't hate Dick Cheney, W Bush, Reagan, because I don't want to be like them. I don't want that mind, so I don't hate it. I can't hate somebody I know to be a low down slime ball. I can't hate somebody who has sex with a child. I don't want any of that kind of thinking for myself. Because I can't hate a racist, for example, the feeling changes to sorrow for the person with a particular affliction I don't want. I figure they don't want it either, but it's stuck to them and they can't help it. I don't want that, so I don't hate it. Accept and allow seems to be the way to go with the flow and not worry about the mind stuff.

river phoenix and Martha Plimpton

 

 

 

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THE TEMPEST THE MOVIE

helen mirren as prospera in the tempest

This was one of those days of discovery, discovering a new artist in film director Julie Taymor, and discovering her film of Shakespeare's The TEMPEST with Helen Mirren playing Prospera, a feminine version of Prospero who was played immortally by John Gielgud in Peter Greenaway's PROSPERO'S BOOKS. For me, Greenaway's is the definitive rendering of Shakespeare's play. I didn't know what to expect going into Taymor's Tempest. The name Julie Taymor meant nothing to me, except I had seen her film FRIDA of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. I looked up a little bit of bio info on her and found she'd made a film of Stravinsky's opera, OEDIPUS REX, which I used to listen to on LP years ago, and Shakespeare's TITUS Andronicus with Anthony Hopkins. I liked what I saw so much in the Tempest I ran these last two to the top of my netflix Q. Julie Taymor caught my attention as an American artist I wanted to see more of.

I had no idea what to expect of the Tempest. I only knew that Helen Mirren was in it, reason enough for me to see the film. That she is in a film is all I need to know to want to see it. She first caught my attention in THE COOK THE THIEF HIS WIFE AND HER LOVER. The title makes sense after seeing the film. It too is a Peter Greenaway film, the first one that drew my attention to him and to Helen Mirren. It is one of the most powerful films I've seen. It has a power as strong as Pasolini's OEDIPUS REX. It's not one to see often, but every viewing of it is rewarding to what I like a film to be, a work of art especially. The three previews that preceded the Tempest were all Disney movies. My heart sank. What if this is a Disney made-for-tv version of the Tempest like the Disney version of Pinocchio. I had a Disney television production in my mind going into it. And I was anticipating from the repeating visuals with the Menu that it might be a minimalist hi-tech Prospera with a feminist slant. When the first characters started speaking straight Shakespeare language, I had to turn on the subtitles, in shock that it was straight Shakespeare. I started seeing actors Alfred Molina, Russell Brand, Chris Cooper and Djmon Hounsou, the black man in GLADIATOR and BLOOD DIAMOND. Hounsou made as memorable a character as Caliban as he does with the characters in his other films. He has a great deal of the natural charisma an actor needs.

I saw that the characters were actors I've seen in several films over the years. Alfred Molina was unforgetable in THE PEREZ FAMILY made in Miami by Indian director Mira Nair, and Chris Cooper was unforgettable in AMERICAN BEAUTY and long string of other movies. These familiar actors showing up puzzled me. This was not a Disney slap-stick sitcom version of Shakespeare. A little ways into it I started seeing this is a serious film, which I'd taken it for when I put it on my Q, but all the intro going into it scared me into preparing myself for serious disappointment. By the time I recognized this is a real work of art, I was well enough into it to see for certain art was it's direction, a serious interpretation of The Tempest. The only thing "feminist" about it was Prospero as a woman. Nothing was made of it. It was not like any kind of big deal. She was the same as Prospera as would be a Prospero. She was Miranda's mother instead of father. It was Helen Mirren playing Shakespeare himself. She was aware of it and up to it. I've an idea she loved playing the role.

All scenes were outdoor in desert landscape. It had a sense of Pasolini about it in that way. I recalled his OEDIPUS REX filmed in North African desert landscape, and MEDEA. I'll be curious to see how Taymor portrays the Oedipus Rex story post-Pasolini. The Tempest happened on a desert island. It was Pasolini in color sometimes, though it was also the Tempest with Julie Taymor's hand in it, not Pasolini's. Of all the versions of the Tempest I've seen, this one is the most clear for distinguishing what the characters are about. Caliban in Prospero's Books was an Xtreme modern dancer who in one sense was the spirit of art itself, elements of the earth, like paint and sculptor's clay are made directly from earth. Art is materials of this earth arranged by form, color, design to give a sense of a living spirit in the work of art. The example I see in my mind's eye is Brancusi's Bird In Space. It is so the essence of bird shape it becomes bird spirit. Djmon Hounsou as Caliban represented Caliban in a way that felt right, his outrages of anger he had no control over, a man absolutely devoid of introspection. Caliban is like the missing link between animal and human. He has the human body, but his human sensibilities are limited though his animal nature is in full force. By animal nature, I mean pre-forebrain. More or less how we think of caveman consciousness.

By half way into the film I had seen much earlier that it was a serious interpretation of Shakespeare's Tempest to be regarded as such. By the time it was over, I was fully satisfied by Shakespeare's writing in story and in language. I felt Helen Mirren's portrayal of Prospera a tour de force for a great actress. Using desert landscape for stage set in every scene gives a sense of a stage production with an empty stage, no sets, just floor and walls. Peter Brook's Midsummer's Night Dream was performed on an empty stage. It's done so much since Waiting For Godot that by now it's just another option of how to stage a production. Sometimes no context can place emphasis somewhere else, like the landscape of the mind, the place where the production is playing out. I felt like using barren landscape in this film, as in a Pasolini film, makes it a story that is already inside the mind, an archetype that expresses differently in different contexts. The Tempest is an archetype the same as Oedipus Rex and Waiting For Godot.

As a portrayal of The Tempest, I felt closer to this one than to Prospero's Books. Peter Greenaway's version is itself with it's feet in The Tempest. Julie Taymor's Tempest is fully, and I mean fully like a full belly, satisfyingly Shakespeare's Tempest. In both film versions I beleive my favorite part is toward the end when Prospero/Prospera releases the spirit helpers kept as slaves by magician creator of characters that live their brief lives on stage. The spirit of air, fire and water, Ariel, and the spirit of the earth, Caliban, the playwright releases them as freed slaves to return to their life of freedom from restraint. Greenaway's film had so much going on at all times the story often faded into the spectacle and was lost for awhile. In Taymor's vision of the Tempest, the drift of the story is front and center, and the film in desert landscape makes a minimalist telling of the tale. Both Taymor's and Shakespeare's stories are pared down to the essential like a Brancusi sculpture, the minimal essence of the story, Shakespeare signing off as the magician on his own desert island of the mind where he commands spirits and creates characters, influences events. Prospero/Prospera's return from exile on a desert island, the mind, to the city with position and context, is retirement to the world of living one's everyday life again in the context of other people. Letting go of his characters that lived in his mind and the spirits that gave life to his characters is a sweet sorrow for the playwright/magician.


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