Dead Poets Society (1989)

Dir. Peter Weir

Starring: Robin Williams, Robert Sean Leonard, Ethan Hawke, Josh Charles

 

This is not the first time I have watched Dead Poets Society. I watched it when I was myself a schoolboy. I was not inspired by the story. Rather, I thought the film was pretty lame. I did not enjoy it at that time, and I was not looking forward to watching it again. 

To my surprise, two decades later, I really enjoyed the movie. I can see why the critics loved it. The film itself (the story, acting or direction) will not have changed in the intervening twenty years. A film’s quality is set upon completion. What has changed is my reaction to and appreciation of it. I am reminded of the scene in the film where teacher John Keating orders his class to tear out the introduction to a compilation of poetry which claims that the “importance” of a piece of poetry can be objectively measured and used to guide the reader’s appreciation thereof. This is mere herd mentality. Instead, one should learn to appreciate art for itself and make up ones own opinions. These opinions will inevitably depend upon the person involved – their receptiveness, their imagination, their personality. Appreciation cannot be measured objectively; it is an entirely subjective experience. This is just as much the case for films as it is for poetry. 

In Dead Poets Society a conservative New England prepatory school (which is not what the English would call a prep school – instead it is a boarding school) in the 1950s is shaken up by the arrival of young teacher John Keating (Robin Williams, seen in Insomnia and Good Will Hunting). He has come to teach English, but he demands that his students challenge orthodoxy and learn to feel the poetry rather than cramming received opinions into their brains to help them prepare for exams. He wants them to show intelligence rather than learning; wants them to get something out of the subject more than just a pass mark. He wants them to dare, to try, to grow – “Carpe Diem! Sieze the day boys! Make your lives extraordinary!” He wants them to think. He wants them to realise that they have a voice and it deserves to be heard no matter how barbaric their yawp. 

This is, of course, contrary to Welton Academy’s belief in Tradition and Discipline. The school system, much like that in the 1960s British classic If…, seeks to stifle individuality, promote conformity. It exists to ensure that its teenage charges are prepared for the life-course their parents have already decided for them: Welton – Ivy League – doctor / lawyer / banker. The boys are to have no say in this life-course. The future is their clam – they’ve been in its grip since the day they were born. Inevitably there is going to be a smash.

The problems come from a group of boys who allow themselves to be inspired by Keating. They follow in his footsteps by reforming the 'Dead Poets Society'. His ‘unconventional methods’ – I think the phrase is even used by the headmaster – include getting them to stand on desks, rip pages from textbooks and march around the courtyard. When Todd Anderson (Ethan Hawke) has trouble expressing himself Keating pushes and pushes and pushes him until he comes up with some freestyle poetry about a “sweaty-toothed” Walt Whitman. The scene is reminiscent of Williams pushing Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting.  

Keating is blamed for the smash. And well he might be. He gives them hope. Disatisfaction occurs when reality cannot match up with expectations. When the boys had no expectations they could face reality. “Show me the heart unfettered by foolish dreams and I’ll show you a happy man” McAllister (Leon Pownall) quotes. By trying to make them reach for the stars Keating sets them up for a fall. Sometimes it works out: Knox (Josh Charles) gets the girl, Todd finds his voice. Sometimes it doesn’t: natural ringleader Dalton (Gale Hansen) is expelled, and even worse in in store for Neil Perry (Robert Sean Leonard). The lines by Thoreau read at the start of every meeting of the Dead Poets Society contains the exhortation “To put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I had come to die, discover that I had not lived.” Neil is faced with ten years of unlife. Ten years in which he is forbidden to act. Ten years in which he must attend military school and then study to become a doctor at Harvard. He wants none of this. Faced with a future in which he will not live he decides not to. Words are dangerous. Like Christopher McCandless in Into the Wild he trusts the words that have touched him – words which were, again, by Thoreau – and refuses to live any other way. 

So how has my opinion of the film changed in the last twenty years? I still don’t believe it; I had very good teachers, but none of them were inspirational. The whole idea that schoolboys would want to recreate a student society their teacher had been a part of just strikes me as extremely unlikely. No, what attracted me was the father-son bond. Keating is literally in loco parentis. The boys are in boarding school away from their parents. Mr Perry is a humourless martinet. Todd’s parents see him as an afterthought – they even give him the same present two years in a row. I find that, at my time of life, anything to do with father-son love gets me weeping. The boys’ final betrayal of Keating – and the emotional last scene – gets me. When I mentioned on Facebook that I had watched Dead Poets Society I received comments of the calibre of ‘O Captain, my Captain! *weeps uncontrollably*’. I think this is the emotional core of the film. Added to which, the boys are not clichés. There are Jocks and Cheerleaders at a neighbouring school, several of the group are Nerds (to be honest considering that they form a poetry club they are probably all Nerds). But there is no rivalry amongst the boys – they are supportive of each other. I can appreciate all this with distance. Probably at the time it all seemed so normal – I underwent singe sex education in a private school. I maybe did not regard the situation as especially remarkable, which would make the inspiration garnered from Mr Keating even more unbelievable.  

 

The mouse terrified the entire class

I am glad that I revisited Dead Poets Society after this break. It is not a ‘hidden classic‘ – it has been critically acclaimed. But, with maturity, it has allowed me to get something out of a film that I did not like at first watch. 

What have I learnt about Vermont?

Vermont from this film just seems to be a cipher for ‘conservative and blue-blooded New England’. Much like the upper class university featured in The Rules of Attraction (set in neighbouring New Hampshire), Dead Poets Society features an upper class boarding school. It is stated that Perry’s parents are not rich like Dalton’s, yet the father still travels to Chicago on business. This is a crammer school to provide the next generation of society’s cream – lawyers, bankers and doctors – by preparing them for the Ivy League. It seems to recruit its students from the local area however, so presumably the environs are fairly wealthy. It is also able to recruit teachers from overseas. While Keating was an old boy he had been teaching in London. His colleague McAllister is Scottish.

There are pronounced seasonal shifts. Autumns have rich golden foliage; winter sees snow thick on the ground and lakes frozen over. There are lakes and rivers and flocks of geese. 

Can we go there?

Okay, I’m angry now. Considering how hard I found it to find any films set in Delaware I have now stumbled across one set in Vermont but filmed in Delaware. This therefore means that my three 'Vermont' movies were filmed, respectively, in California, Massachusetts and Delaware.

 

Welton Academy and the town of Welton itself do not exist. The school used was actually St. Andrew’s School in Middletown. This school has produced some notable freethinkers- its alumni include Loudon Wainwright III and Tom Verlaine. Additional filming took place around Middletown and New Castle. These include the Everett Theatre in Middletown, Westover Hills in New Castle (the Perry residence was 708 Edgehill Road) and Beaver Valley Cave on the Pennsylvania border (though the interior was recreated in a warehouse for shooting). The cave is known as ‘Delaware’s Only Cave’; it is on private land and cannot be visited. 

Overall Rating: 4/5

State and Main (2000)

Dir. David Mamet

Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rebecca Pidgeon, William H. Macy, Alec Baldwin 

State and Main is the intersection of two roads at the heart of Waterford, Vermont. It is also the intersection of two ways of life when the quiet, quaint town finds itself playing host to a movie crew. A (mostly) good-hearted country welcome awaits the (mostly) cynical and sleazy film industry types. 

Director Walt Price (Fargo’s William H. Macy) is the man with all the problems. They have been run out of New Hampshire after an unspecified ‘incident’ and find themselves needing to relocate filming over the border in to Vermont with no increase in costs. He has to keep the townsfolk sweet, answer questions from the crew about what he wants, placate leading lady Claire Wellesley (Sarah Jessica Parker) who refuses to show her breasts on screen, keep star Bob Barrenger (Pearl Harbor’s Alec Baldwin) out of trouble – it was probably his predilection for school girls that lay behind their problems in NH – and figure out how to complete The Old Mill when it turns out Waterford’s old mill was actually burnt down in 1960. 

Increasingly the man with the answers is playwright Joseph Turner White (Philip Seymour Hoffman). As the writer of the screenplay it is his job to reconcile all the different interests and make up for the lack of an old mill. In this he is helped by sparky local bookshop owner Annie (Rebecca Pidgeon). From her he learns that he has to speak truth and focus upon what is really important. From him she learns that she can do better than her ambitious fiancé Doug (Clark Gregg).

In real life the roles of writer and director were combined in one person – David Mamet. His script sparkles with great cheeky lines, from the old-timers in the diner reading Variety and commenting on opening takes to the insiders’ jokes about the movie industry. Particularly the value of associate producer credits (“It’s what you give to your secretary instead of a raise”). This is a world where money is the most important thing in the world. It is more important than vision or scruples. Why else would Gandhi 2 get made? It is implied Bob had an affair with an underaged girl in New Hampshire; the residents are so annoyed that… they hold the film set hostage. In Vermont Doug is determined to see that Waterford gets its percentage of the gross. He is later bought off when he tries to prosecute Bob for yet another misdemeanour. They have no budget to create a new mill and so solutions have to be found. Joseph is promised a career if he will perjure himself. Claire has an attack of religion and absolutely refuses to show her breasts… unless she is paid an extra $800,000. It is a world of grubby compromises. 

The contrast with pleasant town life could not be more apparent. Everyone is friendly to one another. They are bonded by their love of the Huskies and local amateur theatre. Cops offer women their coats to walk them home in the rain. The majority of people are helpful and not working an angle. The film then is a culture-clash comedy like Sweet Home Alabama or Doc Hollywood. The film it most reminds me of, however, is 1986’s Sweet Liberty. That film almost made it on to my list for North Carolina and sees a film crew descend on a small town to shoot a flagrantly-inaccurate Revolutionary War romance. Writer and director Alan Alda went one better than Mamet – he also starred in his film.

 

Have you guessed what it is yet?

While Mamet does not feature in State and Main his wife, Rebecca Pidgeon, does. This explains why I had never heard of her alone amongst a cast featuring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Alec Baldwin, Sarah Jessica Parker, William H. Macy and Julia Stiles. To be fair though, she shines as the pleasant – if somewhat enigmatic – bookstore owner who finds herself attracted to Joseph. This film really encapsulates the idea of the ‘ensemble cast’ with everyone weaving in and out of scenes perfectly. Macy gets the lion's share of the comedy - well him and David Paymer's ball-breaking producer ("I'm going to rip your heart out, then I'm going to piss on your lungs through the hole in your chest! And the best to Marion..."). Yet while there are lovely performances the film does feel at times like a succession of great one-liners. The script is a collection of witty soundbites tied together with plot exposition, almost as if Mamet chose his favourite quotes and then filled in the linking scenes afterwards. Statements appear as non sequiturs: “It’s absurd!” “So’s our electoral process but we still vote.” This is the main let down with the picture. Mamet is trying too hard to be Mamet.

What have I learnt about Vermont?

Vermont contains archetypal little towns (called ‘cities’ despite their small size) that don’t seem to have changed much since the 19^th century. While each might be considered interchangeable by outsiders they all have their own distinct quirks and mannerisms and things to set them apart – whether it is the historic stained glass window of Waterford’s fire station, the history of arson, the constant greeting of “Go Huskies” or the mystery of what happened in 1975. Sometimes it is best if outsiders do not even attempt to figure these things out… 

These towns may be small, but they are as riven with politics as everywhere else. And it is certainly not wise to piss off the mayor or his wife! 

It would also be a safe assumption that some of the earliest settlers in these parts were of Scottish extraction. The town is located in Caledonia County, and the mayor (O Brother, Where Art Thou?’s Charles Durning) and his wife (Broadway star Patti LuPone) get all rigged up in pseudo Scottish outfits for their dinner with the film company. 

Can we go there?

The film crew found themselves transplanted to Waterford in Caledonia County. The town really exists. It is set across the Connecticut River from New Hampshire. It has a volunteer fire brigade and everything.

In a possible case of life imitating art, State and Main was set in Vermont, but filmed in Massachusetts. The town of Manchester-by-the-Sea north-east of Boston doubled for Waterbury. The former Belmont School in Malden provided the location for the film’s ‘sets’ (whih included the ‘courthouse’). The Endicott Estate in Dedham (south of Boston) was used for the hotel at which the company stay. 

Overall Rating: 3/5

White Christmas (1954)

Dir. Michael Curtiz

Starring: Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, Vera-Ellen 

I started my Christmas shopping today. We stopped off in a garden centre and the place was festooned with decorations and piled high with gift ideas. I found myself making a few opportunistic purchases to kick off the season. It put me in quite a festive mood. When I got home I found myself slipping Irving Berlin’s White Christmas into the DVD player to continue the theme. 

White Christmas tells the story of army buddies Bob Wallace (High Society’s Bing Crosby) and Phil Davis (Danny Kaye). In the decade since they first met, at a Christmas Eve show on the front line in Italy, they have hit the big time with their musical revue. When we join them they are packing up their touring show in Florida in preparation for returning to winter in New York. Fate intervenes when they catch the show of the Haynes Sisters. Phil notices a spark between Bob and Betty (Rosemary Clooney – the aunt of The Ides of March’s George); keen to get his workaholic pal off his back he hatches a scheme to fix the pair of them up. Betty’s sister Judy (Vera-Ellen) is happy to conspire with him. To this end they persuade Bob to stay on the train with them and head up to Pine Tree, Vermont, where the sisters will be performing a dinner show for hotel guests over the winter season. 

However the arrive in Vermont in a heat wave. Despite their promises to Bob there is no snow. And there are no guests either. The Columbia Inn is empty and its owner seems destined for bankruptcy. However that owner is Bob and Phil’s beloved army commander, General Waverly (Dean Jagger). Wallace and Davis decide to shift their show up to Pine Tree to attract guests. Bob goes further and uses a slot on the Ed Harrison TV show to appeal to all the former members of the 151^st Division to head up and remind their former general that he hasn’t been forgotten. All they need now is, as if by some miracle, for the snow to start to fall so that everyone can enjoy a truly magical white Christmas. 

With the main characters being entertainers it provides the excuse for a host of Irving Berlin songs to be crowbarred in – Sisters, Love, You Didn’t Do Right by Me and, of course, the title track. Oddly it is the songs sung in character (like Count Your Blessings or The Best Things Happen When You’re Dancing) that work the best. Big production numbers from the Wallace and Davis show like Minstrels / Mr Bones / Mandy or the frankly weird Choreography stick out peculiarly – like they have been transplanted from an entire other show. Which, to be fair, most of the songs have. Bing Crosby first sang White Christmas in Holiday Inn; he sang it again in Blue Skies. Now the song gets its own film, but in a very different context. The first rendition takes place against an idyllic snowy backdrop – but all it is is a stage set. Panning out we see the audience, a grizzled combat troop, and we see the location, a bombed-out village on the front line. The setting is ripe with pathos – hardened soldiers, far from home, thinking of the families they left behind.

In fact pathos is something White Christmas does well, so it was fitting that I was watching it on Remembrance Sunday. One of the most interesting songs is one called What Can You Do With a General? In it Bing laments that after the war G.I.s were assured of jobs, but that there had never been so many unemployed generals in circulation, and it was not quite so easy to find positions for them. General Waverly tells Bob that he has applied for a posting back in the Army; when his letter is taken as a joke he is crushed. It may have been the Haynes Sisters who lured Wallace and Davis up to the Columbia Inn, but it is the problems of their proud General Waverly that keep them there. 

Danny Kaye might not have been first choice to partner Bing in the film but he gives a very good account of himself – his shameless mugging provides a good foil to Bing’s drollness. He’s also a nifty little hoofer – witness his Best Things Happen When You’re Dancing sequence with Vera-Ellen in Florida which could have been transplanted straight from An American in Paris. Vera-Ellen is there for her dancing skills rather than any inherent musicality and her singing was dubbed. In fact, in Sisters both parts were sung by Rosemary Clooney who provides an appealing love interest (even if she was much younger than Bing, the 25-year age gap is less noticeable than the 27-year one with Grace Kelly in High Society). I should also mention Mary Wickes as Emma the nosey housekeeper. This role could have been played as a comedic old woman; instead there was warmth and truth in the characterisation. Casting a younger woman worked well and while there was a shade of Pauline McLynn’s Mrs Doyle from Father Ted about her I had hopes that she and the General might end up together. 

White Christmas is not the most Christmassy movie ever – not enough snow frankly – but it is fun and feelgood. 

The budget for the Christmas set was smaller than they had anticipated

What have I learnt about Vermont?

Vermont in winter means one thing: snow (“Snow! Snow!! Snow!!!”). It is famed as the winter playground of America (much to the displeasure, I am sure, of Idaho’s Sun Valley!). It has hills blanketed with snow, pine forests, ski lodges, one horse open sleighs dashing through the lanes and a peculiar combination culture that allows for German words and Swedish liverwurst and buttermilk smorgasbords.

However, if the snow doesn’t fall it does not get the tourists. One gets the impression that the rest of the year is preparation for the holiday season. Warm winters are the last thing locals want or need. 

Can we go there?

It is immediately apparent that the entire film was shot on set. This took place at Paramount Studios (except for the Pine Tree Station scenes; Paramount did not have a railway station set so they had to be filmed at Fox instead). No filming took place in Italy, Florida or Vermont. 

In Vermont the setting was the Columbia Inn in Pine Tree (the set used was actually that created for the earlier Holiday Inn). Pine Tree does not exist in real life but as portrayed it was a stop on the east coast rail line that headed up from Florida and through New York. 

Overall Rating: 3/5

Week 46: Vermont

"Evening summer breeze,
 Warbling of a meadowlark,
 Moonlight in Vermont;
 You and I and moonlight in Vermont..."
 - 'Moonlight in Vermont',
 Frank Sinatra

For a very light piece of music, Sinatra's Moonlight in Vermont is one of my favourite tracks on his Come Fly With Me album. The lyrics conjure up a romantic rural get-away in the country even to someone who has never been there: falling leaves, sycamores, ski trails on a mountainside, telegraph wires singing round each bend in the road... Vermont has always sounded like the sort of place to hide away with your love in a farmhouse cottage, far from the cares of the big city.

 

And in fact Vermont does have the second lowest population of any American state. It is all forests and hills. It is a wedge-shaped state slotted like a keystone in between New Hampshire and larger New York (in fact it was originally part of New York but split off to become a separate state, the first to be admitted to the Union since independence). I would imagine its population swells with tourists though. Vermont's autumn foliage is supposed to be the best in New England, its mountains provide winter sports, there are more covered bridges than Madison County, and you can drop in to Ben and Jerry's original ice cream farm like Jim Carey and Renee Zellwegger did in Me, Myself and Irene.

 

So, having already passed through Vermont once, now we are back again for a proper vacation. The three films to watch on our week-long stay are:

• White Christmas (1954)
• State and Main (2000)
• Dead Poets Society (1989)

Broken Arrow (1996)

Dir. John Woo

Starring: John Travolta, Christian Slater, Samantha Mathis, Delroy Lindo 

I remember, back in 1996, some people telling me that they had attended a premiere for the film Broken Arrow. They stated that the highlight of the evening was that Chris Barrie from Red Dwarf and The Brittas Empire was present. The film they really did not rate. I therefore had understandably low expectations when I placed Broken Arrow on my list of films set in Utah.

And, y’know, it was passable if not particularly great. It belongs to that mid-90s school of action movies which so inspired Michael Bay – spend the budget on special effects and explosions and hope the rest of the film looks after itself. Examples from our cinematic odyssey so far would include Twister and Hard Rain (in fact Broken Arrow and Hard Rain share the same writer – Graham Yost – and one of the stars – Christian Slater). And there are plenty of things that explode in this film, including (but not limited to) a stealth bomber, four helicopters, and a train. Oh yeah – and half of Utah when a nuclear warhead detonates. That’s how extreme the movie is. In any other film the hero would be racing to stop a nuclear warhead going off; in Broken Arrow one goes off and the hero has to race to stop a second going the same way.

Slater stars as USAF pilot Captain Riley Hale. Alongside Major Vic Deakins (John Travolta) he flies the B3 Stealth Bomber. Sent off on a training exercise over Utah he is suddenly attacked by his commanding officer: Deakins intends to steal the warheads and hold the U.S. for ransom. There then follows a game of cat and mouse as Deak’s mercenaries try to make off with the missiles and Hale – helped by park ranger Terry (Samantha Mathis) – attempt to stop them.

As I say, there are plenty of things blowing up all over the shop (particularly helicopters; if you’ve ever had a deep-seated hatred of helicopters this is the film for you). There are firefights in canyons, in trucks, in mine passages and on trains. There are expendable heavies to get walloped (even if some of them do get snarled henchman lines: “You probably thought I was a computer nerd, didn’t you? Wrong! I was a Navy SEAL lady!” or “This is where you get off…”). Shit explodes. And slap bang in the middle we have Travolta hamming his way up a sliding scale of madness. We know he’s a bad guy – he smokes! – for heavens sake, but he really ratchets through the gears here. When we get to the part – which you can see coming well in advance – when someone exclaims “You’re out of your mind!” Deak’s only response is “Yeah – ain’t it cool?” Slater, as in Hard Rain, does a competent job. Mathis runs around handily. 

 

He had warned her to take more care while shaving

 

It’s just not particularly well written. People seem to produce guns from nowhere. The characters are never fleshed out. Two major characters – Delroy Lindo’s Colonel Wilkins and Frank Whaley’s adviser Giles – just sort of vanish from the plot. There is a line about “endangered dirt” which I immediately registered as being a Very Important Plot Point – why else would it be in there? But then nothing is ever mentioned of it again. And there is a persistent aura of misogyny. Terry calls Hale “Captain”; he calls her “lady”. Even when she jumps a goon by surprise the goon is able to turn the tables, requiring Hale to rescue her. Sure, she’s brave and she has a good verbal spar with Deakins, but she is still background to the big hard male hero.

Broken Arrow has a couple of good lines (Hale on their training mission: “When the day comes that we have to go to war against Utah we’re really gonna kick ass.” Later, after improvising an explosive petrol can Terry asks “Where die you learn that? The air force?” He replies “New Jersey.”). There were two moments when I actually felt the adrenaline pump that comes from a good action movie. But two moments in an entire film isn’t really good enough. If you are going to sacrifice writing for action at least make it good action. Make it real edge-of-your seat dizzying furious action which leaves you thinking that the characters (whom you should, ideally, care about) could lose. That just doesn’t happen here – despite all the beeping, flashing count-downs that pepper the film. It is a waste of director John Woo’s talents. Broken Arrow is watchable; but you wouldn’t particularly want to watch it twice. It doesn’t even have Chris Barrie in it…

What have I learnt about Utah?

In Broken Arrow we see the same parched landscape and the same red rock canyons as in 127 Hours. The land featured is national park – hence the presence of a feisty park ranger. Who knew park rangers were armed? Rangers have to know the land. Even outside the park – one assumes that if there was copper mining going on until fairly recently that would not be on National Park land. 

Can we go there?

Broken Arrow was set in, over and under Utah (with side trips to Missouri, Colorado and Washington, D.C.). Utah locations include it’s own ‘Little Hollywood’, Kanab, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and Lake Powell. I think the action was actually meant to be set in Canyonlands as reference is being made to "suspicious trucks" entering via the Needles gate.

Filming took place outside Utah too. The scenes on the train were shot on the Central Montana Railroad near Lewiston, right in the middle of the state. From the photos it looks as though the tunnel is located between Danvers and Denton. The trestle bridge seen in the film (the one, I think, from which Howie Long’s Kelly falls) runs over the Judith River, but was badly damaged by floods last year). 

Overall Rating: 2/5

127 Hours (2010)

Dir. Danny Boyle

Starring: James Franco, Amber Tamblyn, Kate Mara, Clémence Poésy 

In 2003 Aron Ralston travelled off canyoneering in the cracked and fissured terrain of Utah’s Canyonlands National Park. He went alone and he told no one where he was going. This meant that when he lost his footing and ended up with his arm pinned by a fallen boulder at the bottom of an isolated slot canyon no one knew where he was. He was lost, trapped and without a hope of a rescue. Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours is the story of his ordeal.  

This is a tale of survival in the most extreme circumstances. Unlike Christopher McCandless in Into the Wild Aron (here played by James Franco, previously seen – uncredited – in Nights in Rodanthe) likes the great outdoors but he does not fetishise it. He fetishises himself. He is an adrenaline junkie outdoors nut. He sees himself as a “big fucking hard hero” able to deal with any problem himself. And as a result he pushes away those close to him. He is a solitary superman through his own choices and inclinations. But when his choices and actions leave him trapped he has to reassess the decisions he has made in his life. In No Country for Old Men Chigurh rationalises his killing of passers-by: every choice, decision, action has led to the intersection at the same time of that person, himself, and the coin he will toss to decide whether they live or die. Likewise Aron is forced to confront the reality that every choice or decision he has made, every action he has taken has led to his present predicament. “I chose this. I chose all this. This rock… this rock has been waiting for me my entire life; it’ entire life, ever since it was a meteorite a million, billion years ago. In space. It’s been waiting to come here. Right, right here. I’ve been moving towards it my entire life. The minute I was born, every breath that I’ve taken, every action has been leading me to this crack on the outer surface.” If he had not pushed his girlfriend (Clémence Poésy) away she would have been with him. If he had answered his mother’s phonecall that morning he could have told her where he was going. If he hadn’t parted company with the two hikers he had met (Amber Tamblyn and Kate Mara) they could have helped. If he hadn’t left his Gatorade in the truck, if he had pickd up his Swiss Army penknife… Reflecting on his life he recognises that he has found himself in his present situation simply because of his “supreme selfishness”. 

He may be selfish but he is ingenious. Considering that Aron is stuck by himself at the bottom of the canyon for 127 hours he has a lot of time to fill. His engineering training comes in useful. Up to a point. He can fashion himself a harness to support his weight. He can use a stick as a hook when he drops his Leatherman. He can work out what he would need to support a pully system to pull the boulder off his arm. He also tries to chisel away at the edges of the boulder with his blunt Leatherman in the hope of being able to dislodge it. Unfortunately gravity means that the boulder only settles more firmly onto his trapped right hand. In the end he is out of water, out of food, out of battery and out if time. He has to do a very grave piece of root cause analysis. What traps him where he is? A boulder on his arm. Can he free his arm from underneath the boulder? No. In that case, can he free himself from his trapped arm? Using the can-opener tool of his Leatherman to hack through his own flesh the answer is: possibly. Recognising that the hand and forearm is going to be lost anyway he chooses to try and save the remainder of his body rather than face certain death. It takes a lot of guts to make such a decision. Seeing the resultant action as he forces his bone to break and then saws through muscle, nerve and tendon to separate himself from his pinioned flesh is genuinely gruesome. 127 Hours is far more sickening than anything that can be seen in ‘video nasties’ like A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Evil Dead or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The violence and gore is a result not of evil or madness but of cold, calm rational deliberation. The only other scene in a film I can think of that made me squirm quite so much was in A Clockwork Orange (the scene where Alex’s eyes are clamped open and water is dripped into them). 

It may be horrifying but director Danny Boyle (of Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire and 2012 Olympics opening ceremony fame) clearly has fun playing around with the medium. He utilises a variety of styles to capture scenes. Aron relates his impressions into a Sony Palmcorder. Early on some of Aron’s action exploits are captured in a grainier lower resolution mode. He uses splitscreens more extensively than an episode of 24. The first time he sucks on his Camelbak the camera gives a view of the water rushing up the tube. Playfulness I thought. Of course, the drinking of water and the lack of it becomes increasingly important later on… My favourite shot though is Aron shouting for help. The camera is pointing directly down towards him. And then, like zooming out on Google Earth the camera goes up, up, up, the scene expands. He is a man, at the bottom of a fissure, off another canyon, in a rocky plateau, in the middle of miles and miles of empty wilderness. This one shot clearly shows quite how isolated and alone and without a chance of rescue Aron is. 

 

He had written to the council three times,
yet still nothing had been done about the pot holes

 

I liked 127 Hours. It is like a modern-day A Christmas Carol: presentiments of mortality make a selfish individual reflect back upon his life and vow to be a better person. But with better scenery.  

What have I learnt about Utah?

If you were not aware that Utah was an outdoor adventure sports mecca you would be after watching this film. The attraction of the baked brick-red landscape is palpable. The area of Canyonlands is one great rock plateau with gorges and slot canyons carved out of the sandstone by the action of water over millennia. In Canyonlands you can hike, climb, canyoneer and even swim. You can cycle too, though as the end credits point out only certain trails are cyclable, and neither Aron Ralston nor James Franco cycled away from the permitted routes. 

While the general climate is one of dry heat the area does get rain. Storms even. With no topsoil to soak it up rainwater runs straight off the rock into gullys and canyons in flash floods. Being trapped in one of these canyons as it rapidly fills with water is hence not a very good idea. This scene in the movie turns out just to be a hallucination by Aron, however. 

The area really is wilderness. You can trek for hours without meting anyone and mobile phones cannot get reception (or they couldn’t back in 2003 anyway). This underlines the importance of notifying people of your planned routes and timings. It is no surprise that Butch Cassidy and his gang were able to successfully hide away in the maze of canyons, as Aron relates.

We don’t see much of the wildlife of Utah: a raven, a lizard and some ants and that is it. 

Can we go there?

Well, okay. But don’t travel alone, ensure that you have a full survival kit and notify someone where you intend to be and when you intend to be back. 

Those caveats aside I can understand your desire to visit the area. The action takes place in Canyonlands National Park and it looks stunning. Aron leaves his truck at the Horseshoe Canyon trailhead (the Horseshoe Canyon section is a ‘detached unit’ several miles to the west of the rest of the Park). He leads Kristi and Megan through the Robbers Roost area. He gets trapped in Blue John Canyon, about 40 miles away from the nearest paved road. The boulder that trapped his arm can still be seen in situ (though it was shifted to retrieve his arm). Blue John was not used for the filming however; a more accessible – and supposedly better looking – alternative, Leprechaun Canyon was used instead. When he escapes he leaves via Horseshoe Canyon; the canyon’s prehistoric rock art (known as ‘the Great Gallery’) is seen. 

The pool used by Aron, Kristi and Megan early in the film was a fictitious addition. It was shot at the Crater at Homestead Resort, Midway, not far south-east of Salt Lake City. 

Overall Rating: 4/5

September Dawn (2007)

Dir. Christopher Cain

Starring: Jon Voight, Trent Ford, Tamara Hope, Jon Gries 

It was Joseph Stalin who alledgedly said “One death is a tradgedy; one million deaths is a statistic.” It is hard for people to get their heads around great historical events – the stories have to be humanised. This is the case increasingly in history writing: just this year I have read Anthony Beevor’s D-Day and Stephen Ambrose’s Citizen Soldiers, both of which drew upon the personal testimony of first-hand witnesses. It is even truer in movie-making. How are we expected to understand the drama of the sinking of the Titanic without the relationship between Jack and Rose? How are we expected to understand the horrors of the Great War except through the eyes of a horse? Or, at any rate, those are the questions asked by film company executives. Cinema is sent down the Les Miserables school of history. September Dawn uses an entirely-fictitious love story to bulk out the tale of an all-but-forgotten tragedy: the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857. 

A convoy of covered wagons wends its way through Utah en route from Arkansas to California. It is a well equipped and funded party. In the south of the territory they appeal to the locals to let them rest up for a fortnight and reprovision. It is only the intervention of the local Bishop / General Jacob Samuelson (Jon Voight, a hell of a lot older than in Deliverance) that allows them to do so. But Samuelson is the leader of the local Mormons and they don’t like these “immigrants”. The prospect of the party’s horses being used for sinful gambling appals them, as does the sight of a woman wearing trousers and wielding guns as if she was a man. There are rumours that the party includes members from Missouri who killed the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith (Dean Cain) and forced the Mormons off their land. And troops from the U.S. Army are heading towards Utah; the fear is that the United States government intends to crush the Church of Latter Day Saints. And so the decision is made to destroy this potential fifth column in their lands. The party is attacked by Paiute Indians and local Mormons dressed as Indians. When the party resists they are besieged. Eventually the Mormons intercede under a flag of truce. As the survivors are led away to what they believe will be safety their ‘rescuers’ turn upon them and slaughter them. 

Against this background is played out a classic story of forbidden love. Bishop Samuelson’s son Jonathan (Trent Ford) and pastor’s daughter Emily (Tamara Hope) fall in love and pledge to marry each other. Theirs are two radically different worlds colliding – “a world of love and a world of hate” as it is expressed at the start of the film. To be together Jonathan will have to rebel against the rule and the teachings of his father and the Mormon faith. 

For in Mormonism, as it is shown here, rule and teaching go hand in hand. Under the governance of Brigham Young (Terrence Stamp) the Utah Territory is to all extent and purposes a theocracy. Being Governor of the Territory goes hand in glove with being President of the Church of Latter Day Saints. Dissent is not tolerated because Young and his ‘Apostles’ are guided directly by God. To go against their decrees is to rebel against God. This is a sin. And in the Mormon faith the only way to expiate sin is “blood atonement”. Whereas Christians believe sins can be atoned for by repenting before God and receiving His grace Mormons believe that sins can only be atoned for by blood and death. Repenting does not matter. Death is atonement. It is a kindness to kill a sinner.

To be honest, it’s a hatchet job. I have no idea if the events of the Mountain Meadows Massacre are as depicted here, nor if the theological arguments put into the mouths of the Mormon characters are those expressed at the time, but the Mormons do not come out of this film well. Their double-dealing and polygamy (Bishop Samuelson has 18 wives and Brigham Young 27, though it is stated that ideally men should only have three) are the least of their negative traits. They may well have felt persecuted and affronted but the fact of the matter is that a Mormon militia, believing that they were doing good, massacred over a hundred innocent travellers; only seventeen children survived. I always get a bit nervous when I see a film allegedly depicting historical events and I cannot see what bias the film is pushing. Here the contrast is made quite clear. Two scenes are spliced into one another at one point. In one the wagon train’s pastor prays for God to bless the locals who have granted them succour; in the other Bishp Samuelson thanks the Lord for delivering the “Gentiles” into their hands and prays for them to be damned to hell. The date of the final massacre is made quite plain: ‘September 11 1857’. Parallels are being drawn between two massacres of innocent Americans in the name of religious fundamentalism that occurred 144 years apart. The Mormons, in this film, are an enemy of the United States; the implication is that they remain an enemy within. 

Whilst taking note of the above, I have to say that the film is not terrible. Historical revisionism can be entertaining as long as the audience goes in with its eyes open: I, for instance, enjoyed U-571. September Dawn is certainly not a great film, but it is competently written and directed, the storyline is clear, as are the contrasts between the two camps. The young actors are engaging and a touch of gravitas is provided by the performances of Terence Stamp and Jon Voight, two holy men that you certainly wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of… 

 

"What do you mean this won't count for Movember?"

 

What have I learnt about Utah?

The Utah depicted in the film is the Utah Territory rather than the State of Utah. As shown it is a stop on the Old Spanish Trail between the Midwest and the boomtowns of Goldrush-era California. Its borders already seem to be fairly well set, and its population is comprised of two groups. 

The first group is that of the Mormons. Firm followers of the Church of the Latter Day Saints and its President, Brigham Young, they are paranoid, polygamous, hierarchical, cowed and blood-thirsty zealots. Young combines the role of Church President, Territory Governor and representative to the Indians, combining both spiritual and temporal power.

The second group are the Paiute Indians who live in the woods. They have a relationship with the Mormons who seem to treat them with respect rather than trying to eliminate them. From one comment made in the film it is possible that the Paiutes had converted to Mormonism too.  

Can we go there?

Mountain Meadows is located in present-day Washington County in the south-west of Utah. At the site can be found two memorials, one a replica of the 19^th century cairn originally constructed by the U.S. Army over the largest gravesite (and now maintained by the Church of the Latter Day Saints) and the other located down in the meadows and maintained by the Utah State Division of Parks and Recreation. The entire site has been decreed a National Historic Landmark. The nearest town is that of Enterprise.

September Dawn was not filmed in the vicinity however. Shooting took place near Calgary in Alberta, Canada. Principle locations were the Augustina Farms and the CL Western Studio and Backlot. 

Overall Rating: 3/5