no way back
by
Douglas Messerli
Guy
Gallo (writer, based on the novel by Malcolm Lowry), John Huston (director) Under the Volcano / 1984
I
last read Malcolm Lowry’s great novel, Under
the Volcano, many years ago, I believe while I was still in college. And
all I remembered about it—until yesterday, when I saw the 1984 John Huston film
based on the novel—was the central figure’s boozy tour of Mexican cantinas. At
the time I did not drink heavily, and I guess
I was a bit amused by a man, obviously witty and, at times, quite able,
purposely putting himself into that hazy blur of a world that would eventually
lead him into danger and death, where he is tossed down the side of a hill like
a dog.
Huston, himself a heavy drinker,
certainly knew how to depict a credible alcoholic, and in actor Albert Finney,
as former British Consul Geoffrey Firman, stationed in Quauhnahuac (read
Cuernavaca), the director found a near perfect actor. Finney has always
been a brilliant performer, but here he convincingly portrays the man so
outraged with the things going on about him—particularly the affair that
apparently occurred between his half-brother, Hugh (Anthony Andrews) and the
Consul’s former wife, Yvonne (Jacqueline Bisset)—that he has escalated his
drinking habit into one endless journey through the bars, restaurants, and parties
where he can find a good (or even bad) drink.
I guess I recalled from my reading that
on this particular day, the Mexican Day of the Dead, that Firman’s now-divorced
wife had suddenly returned to him—or, at least, returned to Hugh, since we all
know that Geoffrey is now beyond redemption. And I do recall that, although she
had written Geoffrey of the fact, that he has lost the pack of unopened letters
he has long carried around in his coat pocket.
Yet what I had truly forgotten or ignored
in Lowry’s original novel, is just how much political events also had an effect
on the characters, particularly Geoffrey and his brother, as they both perceive
just how successful the Nazi’s have been in infiltrating the local Mexican
police and governing agents. Hugh has even been writing articles about it. Hugh,
moreover, has returned from the Spanish Civil War, having witnessed the deaths
of many of his friends, and, finally has been faced by his own disenchantment
with the abilities of the Republicans to win against Franco.
Eventually, Fermin’s desires—both for
alcohol and sex—sends him directly into the rings of hell, as he ends up in a
bar which even the other seedy bar-keepers cannot imagine him as entering.
Here, payment to the prostitute is not enough, nor even the payment of a bribe
to the terrifying procurer, the Dwarf (José René Ruiz). Fermin’s simple observation
of a mule that he had seen earlier that day, a dead peasant upon its back, gets
him into serious trouble with the local Nazi-paid “chiefs.
Here, despite Yvonne’s and Hugh’s
attempts, reclamation is meaningless; Fermin’s political outbursts, finally
catch up with him, as he is brutally shot by the local officials and his body
rolled down the mountain into a gorge below.
Some, I am sure, given Fermin’s complete
lack of control, might find it difficult to sympathize with the former,
self-mocking British man. But, given the political context of his assignation,
along with the personal betrayal of his wife and brother, we can better explain
his desperation for something to put him, even temporarily, out of his mind.
I now perceive that Lowry’s work is not
for the young. It is an old man’s novel, with washed-up figures floating
against an ancient backset, that need the wisdom or even ignorance of old age
to make sense of.
Los Angeles,
March 26, 2017
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