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Ten years after Bronco Billy, the reflexive ringleader's shadow. "Let me put it in Hollywood terms..." Pre-production with the cinéaste-blowhard, strapped and extravagant, brawler, cigar-chomper, "a personal mania for self-destruction." The project is "African something," the observer is the screenwriter (Jeff Fahey) arguing for a happy ending. Ringers for Hepburn (Marisa Berenson) and Bogart (Richard Vanstone) and Spiegel (George Dzundza), at the center is Clint Eastwood with John Huston's raspy growl for a thorough autopsy of the Macho Auteur myth. The rifle is as important as the camera, even more so, the majestic elephant that becomes his obsession must be shot before any footage. "Romantic futility. Your one true love." The roman à clef element is a set of scrims for Eastwood's inquiry into the damaging side of art and the continuous performance of masculinity. "The dark continent" is an exotic nightclub act in Tinseltown, a pleasure dome for the fantasies of the privileged, and finally the arena that lays bare the arrogance of explorers and exploiters. Braving the rapids and pranking the skies and rumbling with bigots, all part of the chase for the Hemingway posture. "Why don't you just tell everybody that it'll be rough, but it'll make for a most distinguished film?" Characters and the gods who create them, "lousy" and "swell," script pages scattered by monkeys. Judicious allusions to The Wings of Eagles, Le Mépris and Fitzcarraldo, plus a rare understanding of Hatari! as an allegory for filmmaking. "How many chances does a man get?" "That's never a reason to do something wrong." A bloody costly safari, a bitter progression at the crossroads of the classic and the modern—sunken in the director's chair in the wake of chastening illumination, the call for "action" never sounded more broken. With Alun Armstrong, Timothy Spall, Mel Martin, Charlotte Cornwell, Catherine Neilson, Clive Mantle, and Boy Mathias Chuma.
--- Fernando F. Croce |