MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1990 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: The story of one of the great
expeditions of history--and of the controversy that
surrounded it--is brought to the screen spectacularly and
intelligently. While the film takes a few liberties with the
facts, I found it a better adventure tale than THE HUNT FOR
RED OCTOBER and give or take a fact or two, it is all a true
story. Rating: +3.
The Nile River came like a miracle out of the desert, the last place you would expect a great river, to bring life to the great Egyptian civilization. That civilization was a major world power--often *the* major world power--for 3500 years, and it was totally dependent on the enigmatic Nile, the only major river that flows south to north. Even today the Nile means life or death to countries in its path. Not surprisingly, when Europeans came to Africa they were fascinated by this strange river and in particular, where the waters originated. But it was time when tracing the river to its origins meant an expedition on foot under nearly impossible conditions. And the only reward would be to go down in the history books as being the one who answered the great question: "Where did the waters of the Nile come from?" When the question finally was answered, it was only at very great cost and it was an answer that would remain shrouded in controversy for almost two decades. MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON is an intelligent yet visually spectacular adventure film about the expedition to find the source of the Nile. It is about Sir Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke, two very different men who made that expedition, and the controversy that came out of that expedition.
The film covers much of the same territory that the excellent BBC mini-series "The Search for the Nile" covered in 1971 (and wouldn't this be a good time for someone to rebroadcast that series?). It is the story of how Burton and Speke came to go on such a perilous expedition, of the experiences on the trek, and of the bitter controversy that arose from their different conclusions about the sources of the Nile.
Sir Richard Burton was perhaps the most colorful explorer and anthropologist of all times and the film hardly does justice to the man's history. Burton had fluency in dozens of languages and was sufficiently good at the art of disguise that he could make himself appear to be a native through much of the world. Disguised as an Afghani, he was the first European to enter Mecca and Medina. He had an unquenchable thirst to learn about other cultures first-hand, especially their sexual practices--in which he both observed and participated--and their erotic literature. He was an eloquent writer and translator, but because of his fixation on the sexual, many of his writings and translations were considered unsuitable in British society. His was the definitive translation of the "Arabian Nights" and it accurately has far more sex and violence than the expurgated versions generally available. Burton was a giant man with giant vices.
On the other hand, John Speke was a petty man with petty vices. His greatest passion was for hunting and he looked upon Africa in large part as one big game park populated with animals he could shoot and populated with savages best avoided. Where Burton had a thirst for knowledge about other cultures, Speke had an attitude of inflexible superiority that more than once put his life in danger.
William Harrison's 1983 novel BURTON AND SPEKE (recently re-issued as MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON) shows much more the personality conflict between these two men and only vaguely hints that they may have had a grudging respect and even an affection for each other. Curiously, this film written by Harrison together with director Bob Rafelson--based on the novel and on the logs the two men kept of the expedition--reverses that viewpoint. It says the two were actually close friends and the post-expedition conflict about the interpretation of their findings was due more to English society wishing to take the opinions of an Englishman, Speke, over those of Burton. Burton was, after all, an Irishman, a free thinker, and a writer of what English society considered pornography. Harrison seems to have changed his mind between writing the book and the screenplay--or had it changed by Rafelson--about what were Burton's and Speke's attitudes toward each other. The irony of the conflict, of course, is that while reading the book and probably while seeing the film you want to believe Burton, it was Speke's interpretation that this "Lake Victoria" was the actual source that was vindicated. Speke's measurements were eventually found to be essentially accurate and his conclusions were correct.
The film's two main characters are powerfully played by Patrick Bergin as Burton and Iain Glen as Speke, both relatively new to American audiences. The film also has a good cast of supporting characters. In a film with two such interesting main characters, it would be quite easy for Fiona Lewis to go unnoticed as Burton's stay-at-home lover and later wife Isabel. Not so, however. Shaw's Isabel is a major character fiercely loyal to an idealized image of her husband, an image of which even the great Richard Burton fell short. Shaw's expression when seeing Burton seems to convey an emotion combining joy and astonishment, the same expression she used as Christy Brown's teacher in MY LEFT FOOT. The original Isabel Burton was by all accounts a remarkable woman totally willing to turn a blind eye to her husband's philandering just to be married to Burton. Eventually her unquestioning loyalty shamed her husband into monogamy. On the night he died, she burned a priceless collection of his unpublished notes and forty- one unpublished manuscripts in a misguided effort to preserve her dead husband's reputation.
Somewhat understated in the film as well as all European accounts of the expeditions is the presence of Sidi Bombay, at this point an inexperienced African hired by Burton and Speke as a guide and treated very poorly by Speke, but who went on to become one of Africa's great explorers.
The film's account of the great expedition, much abridged from the novel and logs, remains harrowing and gives a feel for the courage it must have required to venture into Africa on foot in 1857. The most horrifying sequence, for me all the more so since I had previously read the account in both Harrison's novel and in Burton's account of the expedition, was the incident that resulted in Speke losing his hearing in one ear. Nearly as disturbing is the account of why Burton had to be carried and of the primitive first aid. (I will withhold the details of these incidents for the benefit of readers who do not yet know the story.) All along the way, there are contacts with the local tribes, each with its own culture, and many of whom were not happy to see strangers. The stories of the three expeditions, naturally, had to be greatly abbreviated for the film--in fact, we are only told that the third expedition took place--but what we do see is sufficient for good storytelling.
Harrison and Rafelson's screenplay, while based on the novel and the expedition logs seem to have invented details not in either. At one point in a speech, Burton says that no white man can claim to have discovered a body of water well-known to the local tribes. Even for Burton with his enlightened views, this would seem an anachronistic viewpoint. In actual point of fact it is not the discovery of the body of water that was important so much as its association with the river that is the lifeblood of Egypt, and Speke really was the first person to make the association that the two really were the same body of water. He also gathered reasonable evidence for that point of view. As much as we would like to credit both the local tribesmen and Burton over the priggish Anglo-chauvinist Speke, it really is Speke to whom the credit belongs. As a side note, Burton's views toward Africa were less enlightened than his attitudes toward Arab peoples. As Robert Collins observes in his 1967 introduction to Burton's THE NILE BASIN:
Burton's insatiable appetite for travel soon brought him to Africa. He observed Africa and the Africans at best with the assumptions of a Victorian Englishman, at worst with the attitudes of an Arab slave trader. Not surprisingly, he judged African culture, which he made no attempt to understand, as hopelessly inferior to the Asian and European civilizations he knew so well. African customs, manners, and morals repulsed him, perhaps because they did not fit his preconceived notions of civilization. Moreover, he never sought to separate race and culture. Thus African cultural inferiority became obvious proof of African racial inferiority.
This "Afrophobia" led Burton, as well as other Englishmen, to place Africans at the bottom of the evolutionary scale of national and racial development. True, Burton was sufficiently condescending to consider Africans human beings, but humans of the lowest kind. He argued that only through emigration, or, perhaps, by the adoption of Islam, could they hope for salvation. Burton's bigoted ideas of African inferiority colored all of his writings about Africa, and the more he saw and learned, or rather mislearned, the more vicious became his contempt for the continent. One should not read Richard Burton without keeping in mind this deep-seated prejudice.
It is perhaps a pity that MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON should be released withing days of another adventure film, THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER. Since I had read both novels, it was MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON that I was more looking forward to. My reasons were at least two-fold. First, however realistically Tom Clancy writes and however well-researched his facts were, THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER is fiction and the Burton-Speke expedition is authentic history. It really happened. Harrison had some latitude with the interpretation of events but most of what we are seeing is true. The second, and perhaps more important, reason was that Clancy's heroes sit in large and relatively comfortable machines and play out their game. True, if they lose they die, but if they win the only price they have paid is that they are exhausted. Arguably most of the impressive feats are done by the machinery. But to set off on foot across mid-19th Century Africa with no more defense than a few rifles requires a different character of courage. Burton and Speke set out knowing that even if they found the source of the Nile, by the time they returned Africa would have eaten a big piece of each of them. Speke could not predict that he would have to mutilate horribly his own ear and leave himself deaf; Burton could not predict the diseases he would be stricken with, but that or something just as bad was nearly inevitable. And Burton and Speke went anyway because a question had to be answered. To that degree they were greater heroes than Tom Clancy's fictional imaginings. And yet they were real people. And to find not one but two different books by Burton describing his expeditions in his own words I needed to go no further than my public library.
Because I had greater expectations for MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON than for THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, I knew it was much more likely that I would be disappointed by Rafelson's film. Surprisingly, MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON came much closer to meeting my high expectations that THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER came to meeting lower ones. Rafelson, whose earlier films were very different low-budget films (FIVE EASY PIECES and STAY HUNGRY), has made an intelligent adventure film to be savored for years to come. I rate it a +3 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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