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The ship on wheels pulled by mules ca. 1820 naturally foresees Fitzcarraldo, and there's John Huston aboard with crumpled top hat for a reminiscence of Moby Dick. The grizzly attack on the scout (Richard Harris) epitomizes the bluntness of the title, the burial set by his fellow fur trappers gets postponed, the dolorous recovery begins. "Don't know what's keeping him breathing," mainly it's the vengeful need to catch up to the expedition that left him behind. Various flashbacks reveal an orphan of cholera with no use for God's word, clenched against the world but grave and humbled when addressing the pregnant belly of the wife named Grace (Prunella Ransome): "You've chosen to be born. I don't know why, because it's hell here on earth." A perennial endurance, cf. Chaplin's The Gold Rush, seized by Richard C. Sarafian for a vision of pure brutalist pantheism that complements the obsessive landscapes of Vanishing Point. The kingdom of heaven lies inside, the survivor is told, outside are darting eyes and dried blood and matted hair. The moribund hand still reaching out for water, a native's offhand blessing to the figure at death's door. "What did he give him? A passport to hell?" Oregon territory doubled by wintry Spanish woods, just the uncanny terrain for "New America" and its "pagan regions." Revenge on the Almighty Navigator, an allegorical streak alongside a visceral relentlessness that lingers on the damage ursine claws can inflict on human flesh. It builds to a speck of hope in the muddy stretch where the river should be, and proceeds to Pollack's Jeremiah Johnson. "A man ought to know when his time's up." Cinematography by Gerry Fisher. With Henry Wilcoxon, Percy Herbert, Norman Rossington, Dennis Waterman, James Doohan, Bryan Marshall, Ben Carruthers, and Sheila Raynor.
--- Fernando F. Croce |