Tuesday, February 6

Good 80's Films: The Mosquito Coast

1986 Drama
From Warner Bros.
Directed by Peter Weir

Starring
Harrison Ford
Helen Mirren
River Phoenix
Jadrien Steele
Conrad Roberts
Andre Gregory
Martha Plimpton
Butterfly McQueen

Having just done a posting on Witness, directed by Peter Weir and starring Harrison Ford,  I was interested in learning that Weir started pre-production on The Mosquito Coast before he started making Witness but financing fell through.  Coast was a passion project for Weir and he was not giving up on it.  When he got the offer to make Witness he jumped on it and that film's acclaim made Weir and Coast more bankable.

Coast was never the great success, critically or with the public, that Witness had been but it had a cult type of following and I was among that crowd.  If the general consensus is that Witness contains Ford's best acting role, then Coast certainly contains one of his most unusual.  If my parents had seen it, they would have yelled out one of their oft-repeated expressions... he's off his rocker.  

Two Pauls were involved in the writing of The Mosquito Coast.  Paul Theroux wrote the novel which was based on his many travels, often focusing on his fascination with jungles.  Paul Schrader was assigned to adapt the screenplay.  He was already famous for his screenplays on two Martin Scorsese films, Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, and was a director in his own right.  We profiled his directorial career earlier.  His knack for writing about men whose lives fall apart around them made him a natural for this film.

Allie Fox (Ford) is a me-oriented, irascible inventor with a wife, two older sons and twin daughters.  A right-wing zealot, he is fed up with the American way of life. This country's going to the dogs, he barks to his eldest son.  Land of promise, land of opportunity.  Go on welfare.  Get free money.  Turn to crime.  Crime pays.  How did America get this way

He can't be bothered asking his family how they feel about moving to the Central American jungles... he simply informs them they're all moving, despite the fact that they don't appear at all upset with the life they're living.  His wife (Mirren), never called anything but Mother, just goes along with what he wants and their children seem to idolize him.  Son Charlie (Phoenix) likes to brag that his father has nine patents and six pending.  He seems to ignore the fact that his dad's boss tells him his father is a dangerous man and one day he's going to get all of you killed.





























Allie chooses the jungle after his boss dismisses the newest invention, a large machine where ice is produced by fire.  After the snub, Allie says that such a machine would revolutionize life in the jungle.  It would take courage to move there, he tells his sons, and off they go.  Goodbye America, Allie sneers, have a nice day.

While the family is on a Panamanian barge, they meet a minister (Gregory) and his daughter (Plimpton) who takes a shine to Charlie while their fathers have a heated argument over religion.

Everyone disembarks at La Mosquitia where the ship's captain asks why on earth would you want to live there?  Why indeed.  One would think the name alone would be offputting?  After buying a  boat, Allie lays out cash for his own city, Jeronimo, little more than a group of dilapidated shacks carved out of the jungle at the water's edge.  His family looks around, feeling heartsick, and quickly bemoans their lost lives.  They have no doubt this will be a dystopian existence and neither do we.

Soon Allie has a number of natives working for him.  They generally experience him as an over-bearing, judgmental know-it-all who never shuts up (Ford has never talked as much as he does here) although few understand English.  He works the natives and his family to death, telling them he is teaching them skills to save them from nuclear holocaust while rebuilding a civilization.

This isn't The Adventures of the Wilderness Family or any other sweet-natured opus about a family eschewing urban life for a romp in the woods.  We're aware that Allie has lost touch in many ways and that his gestapo-like demeanor will probably be his undoing.  We cannot dismiss an ominous feeling.

It takes a village to build up Jeronimo including his ice machine, which is as tall as a two-story building.   Allie doesn't do well with anyone crossing him or even questioning him and into their lives come three white men who do just that.  While they spend the night on the ground floor of the ice building, Allie cooks up a scheme to kill them.  While that happens, his nefarious plans backfire and the building catches fire and explodes and extends to the entire village which is decimated.  Bossman didn't forecast that one.

His family is thrilled that they will now be returning to the states and a normal life.  However, Allie informs his brood that the U.S. is no longer there because of a nuclear holocaust.  They don't ask him how he knows that but they also don't believe him and it is at this point that they are not quiet about their displeasure.

After they start to rebuild on what looks like a pinch of an atoll, they are nearly wiped out by a raging storm.  On a makeshift raft they float downriver, an edgy journey because everyone is furious with Allie.  He feels it, too, and when they arrive at the location of the reverend he once fought with, he becomes disgusted overhearing a sermon to a congregation of natives.  That night he sets fire to their church.  The reverend shoots him.

The family manages to get him back on the raft and as they continue downriver, Allie dies from his wounds.  We see the family continuing on, presumably making it safely out of the jungle.  The ending was tamed down, apparently, from the novel but I am glad that Weir and team were true to a dark ending.

I'm not sure why Ford played a character so off-balance and unlikable but it is a good performance which he says is his favorite.  I also like his look here... the glasses and sun-bleached locks were perfect.

I thought Mirren seemed miscast when I first saw the film but later changed my mind, realizing she was a perfect foil (after a while) to Ford.  I might find some fault with the film's lack of a back story on her to better understand her motivations.  Although Mirren had been acting for nearly 20 years at this point, she was largely unknown to American audiences.  I suspect this was my introduction to her.  She still wouldn't garner worldwide fame, however, for another 20 years.

Phoenix, as the narrator of the film, was everything he needed to be.  His real-life peripatetic lifestyle likely served him well here.  He and Martha Plimpton started a romance on this film which lasted through the time they appeared in Running on Empty two years later.  Steven Spielberg took notice of Phoenix in this film and found him to be ideal to play the young Indiana Jones in 1989's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

In a small role and her final one is Butterfly McQueen, Prissy of Gone with the Wind fame.  She plays a deeply religious person although in real life was a devout atheist.  Now that's acting.

In its day, The Mosquito Coast was said to be a modern-day version of Swiss Family RobinsonSFW must shiver at the comparison.  It  could also be said the film, although suffering with some snarky reviews at the time, has gained a far better reputation as years have gone by.  I always found it to be a sobering tale of a man losing his grip on life.  





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