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Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins go head-to-head in The Bounty |
In real life, Bligh was a prickly, difficult but
fundamentally decent man, who had worked his way up the naval ranks through merit.
He was a superb sailor – as seen by his feat of navigating a small open boat of
loyalists over hundreds of miles back to a British port. Cleared of any guilt for
the mutiny, he had a successful career and retired as Vice Admiral. Fletcher
Christian, on the other hand, was an entitled young man who owed everything to
his rich family, rather than merit. The truth has been lost in fictionalised
versions who were devil and saint. The truth was far more complex.
This film was a long-standing dream of David Lean, who
planned the film for many years, before pulling out at the last moment. The
script was written by long-time collaborator Robert Bolt (although ill health
meant it was finished by an uncredited Melvyn Bragg). Producer Dino de
Laurentis – not wanting to write off the money invested – bought in Australian
Roger Donaldson to direct. The final product is a competent, if uninspired,
middle-brow history film with a slight air of stodge, and a haunting – if
incredibly 80s – electronic score from Vangelis. Where the film really lucked
out is the superb cast of actors assembled, with Gibson on the cusp of mega
stardom and the cast stuffed with future Oscar winners and nominees.
Anthony Hopkins had been attached to the film for almost
seven years, and his carefully researched performance as Bligh is what really
gives makes the film work. He gets closer to the personality of the real Bligh
than anyone else ever has. Awkward, shy, uneasy with men under his command,
insecure at his poor background and the West Country burr to his accent, Hopkins’
Bligh is a world away from a bad man. But he is a demanding and rigid leader, who
inspires fear but not respect. He’s far from cruel, but he’s short-tempered, inflexible
and has trouble empathising. All too often, he relies on his position alone to
ensure obedience, rather than building respect. You sympathise with him, at the
same time becoming deeply frustrated at his intransigence. You can understand why
many would find him an extremely difficult man to work with (let alone work
for).
Fletcher Christian is young, naïve and impetuous, a man whose
experiences in Tahiti lead him to become surly and impatient with the confines
of a naval life. Gibson later said he felt the film didn’t go far enough to depict
Christian as selfish and motivated by a desire for the ‘good life’, and the
film does try to show him standing up for the crew against Bligh’s demands for
perfection. But Gibson is willing to embrace Christian’s darkness. He hurls
himself into the (historically attested) near mental collapse, consumed with
violent and unpredictable emotion, that Christian demonstrated during the
mutiny, losing all control of himself in an explosion of self-pity and
frustration.
The film’s highpoints revolve invariably around these
actors. Hopkins’ demanding Bligh sets the tone on the ship. The roots of the
mutiny can be seen in Bligh’s public bawling out (and demotion) of his first
officer Mr Fryer (a disdainful Daniel Day-Lewis) in front of the entire ship, setting
a precedent for disrespect. Every action he intends to build spirit and health
in the crew has the exact opposite effect (from pushing them to excel, to
enforced dancing sessions for exercise). Hopkins is perfect as man believing he
is acting for the best but constantly getting the tone wrong, either too
distant and reserved to inspire affection, or too enraged to inspire loyalty.
Similarly Gibson, in the less intriguing part, really sells the growing self-absorption
of Christian, especially his feckless weakness, easily manipulated into actions
that go a step beyond his desires (Phil Davis is very good as a darkly Iago-ish
Ned Young, using Christian’s popularity to his own ends).
However, the film itself is a little too traditional. Using
Bligh’s trial (all captains who lost their ship were placed on trial to judge
their responsibility) as a framing device brings us slightly too many
interjections of the “and then you did this” variety – even if it allows actors
as impressive as Olivier and Edward Fox to narrate us through the film. This
stodgy structure carries us into a narrative that is professionally handled but
lacks inspiration, ticking off events but not giving them a force outside of
the performances of the actors. The film is competently but not inspiringly
made, and never quite captures the sense of the epic that the location and
scale should bring.
Perhaps this is because a true-to-life version of the mutiny
is a little less traditionally dramatic. Despite some truly impressive
performances from the leads (and the rest of the superbly chosen cast), it
never quite shakes off the feeling of being a history lesson.
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