Lucas Versantvoort / October 31, 2014
What stands out to me about Papillon is the continued teamwork between
one of the great director/composer collaborations: director Franklin J.
Schaffner and composer Jerry Goldsmith. I even found out about the film solely
because of Goldsmith. Imagine my surprise when the film was actually pretty
darn good too.
The film is based on
the true story of Henri Charriere who was sentenced to life and taken an infamous
penal colony on Devil’s Island, off the coast of French Guyana. Once there, he
meets Louis Dega, a forger. Though Dega first hires Henri as a bodyguard, they
soon bond. What follows are their day by day trials at the penal colony and
their multiple escape attempts.
If you’re going into
this film expecting another The Great
Escape, then you’ll undoubtedly come out disappointed. This is not an
adventure film taking place in a
prison, but a film about life in
prison. That combined with the film’s length of 2,5 hours and it wouldn’t be
any surprise if it bored you stiff. I can’t help but feel however that the
length is to the film’s benefit. Like Henri and Dega, you too get exhausted
from the film’s depressing locales and harsh prison life. Maybe this is all
merely rationalization, but hey… I guess your mileage may vary here. At least
for me, the film wasn’t boring. There were many things that kept my attention:
McQueen’s and Hoffman’s performances, the way the film conveys through Dega the
notion that life in the colony may actually be preferable than escaping, the
long, tiring sequence with Henri in solitary confinement. This is a film that
risks being boring by plausibly conveying life on Devil’s Island and is all the
better for it.
When you read my
opening paragraph you just knew I was going to discuss Goldsmith’s score again.
It’s about 40 minutes long, so it’s only occasionally heard in the 2,5 hour
long film, but that’s one of the reasons it makes such an impact. Entire scenes
are carried by nothing but diegetic sound. This includes the
entire solitary confinement scene which only enhances the realism. So, when
music does appear, the dramatic effect is enhanced. Everything from the
French-sounding, wonderful main theme, to the Debussian ‘Catching Butterflies’ and
‘Gift from the Sea’, to the climactic escape music (pay attention to the many
differences and similarities between the music accompanying Henri’s escape
attempts), this is one of the great film scores.
The biggest thing that
might hold this film back is its length and the ‘realistic’ treatment of its
subject matter. Things like the performances and sense of realism in the
portrayal of this particular slice of prison life might appeal to you the same
way it did to me, or it might bore you to tears.
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