Bogart is waist-deep in water, covered in leeches and dragging The African Queen boat through mucky African canal.
M: (imitating Bogart) You did this to us you stupid whore!!
M: What have they been eating all this time? I never see them eat.
M: I hate this movie.
M: What happens when you put one unlikable character and another unlikable character in a boat in Africa and film it for two hours? Not a lot.
M: I hope they die. I hope that's how this movie ends. With death.
Rain falls on a gorgeous autumn day. This coincides with Katharine Hepburn's constant citation of celestial help. We are lead to believe this is a sign.
M: God helps them take the boat out into the water and... Kill Germans...? I thought thou shalt not kill.
Remember the classic, fluid chemistry between Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn in the groundbreaking work The African Queen?
Me either.
Again, this was a movie I hadn't seen that came highly recommended by a good friend, so I am remiss in being too blunt. However, my investigative integrity is ever on the line, and it is with great remorse and sympathy that I must do justice to not only my blog but the greater art of objective, constructive criticism as it exists today as a medium.
This movie made me want to hate-vomit on Katharine Hepburn's bony malformed stupid fucking head. She reminded me of that classic Fight Club quote:
"Chloe looked the way Meryl Streep's skeleton would look if you made it smile and walk around the party being extra nice to everybody."
Her character was blank and two-dimensional and represented a list of fundamental things that I hate about Western Civilization and its overly-simplistic reoccurring ideals. How do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways.
1) The word "Missionary" feels distasteful in my mouth. The movie opens with Miss Streep pounding on a piano and howling church hymns to a room full of Africans wearing feathers and brightly colored warpaint. I don't know if any of this was researched, but even if it was, what a clusterfuck of racism and religious intolerance.
2) Hepburn's character (Rose) sat at the back of the boat with a stiff upper lip and an intolerant eye for nine-tenths of the movie, dictating action to her companion Charlie and scowling when his actions did not live up to her expectations. Her constant grating questions and demands made her an enemy of mine within minutes.
3) She poured out his liquor, emotionally manipulated him with guilt, complacency and malicious silence, demanded he sacrifice his life for a cause he didn't feel at all invested in, and repeatedly took advantage of his good nature. She gave no regard to the fact that if he hadn't saved and housed her (and for all intents and purposes been a complete gentleman, to the best of his ability) she'd likely have been savaged and murdered by Nazis and African child-soldier conscripts on a raised farm in the middle of a war zone. I believe she gave him a solitary "Thank you, Mr. Allnut." before returning to her bible.
4) I understand the theoretical selfless heroism intrinsic to making somebody else rig up a boat with explosives and ram it into a German warship, but that boat was chock full of innocent African abductees who'd just lost their homes (and likely families) to brutal incineration in classic Hitlerian horror-tactics. The Nazis obliterated whatever villages and outposts they found in short order like a hurricane of spiteful anti-Semitic violence.
This brings up the notion of "I was just following orders" as being the most deplorable statement a human being could make, but for these civilians to take it upon themselves to incur what looked to me like a potential 90% plus fatality rate for unwilling African draftees within days of their induction to a cause they likely didn't understand and would likely willingly overthrow given some flicker of hope... It was too much. This gunboat Louisa seems better suited to a small team of British SAS operatives undertaking some kind of black-bag conversion team than napalm. Rose didn't care. She saw things her way and any objection was pure anecdote.
I could go on, but whatever. Charlie was fine, I guess. His helpful can-do attitude made him ingratiating enough, but I wish he'd done more than nod along with whatever half-baked thrills and soap-box aspirations she dreamed up along the way. His big goofy horse-toothed smile and schoolboyish respectful disposition felt true to a good ol' Canadian, to the extent that I could see an adaptable, kindly young man of his nature flourishing in Africa at that time - as much as he needed to get by, anyway, which was his only ultimate aspiration.
After a jarring start the movie floundered for two hours and finally came to a semi-dramatic conclusion in which our heroes were predictably saved by fate and Jesus forever. The Louisa blew up and the bad or at least less desirable people were dispatched and captured by the Proper Authorities (Rose herself, by-and-large) and everything ended as well as it ever could have.
Don't watch The African Queen.
No comments:
Post a Comment