WATERWORLD
A Post-Apocalypse Classic
A film review by Allan Toombs
Copyright 1995 Allan Toombs
WATERWORLD has suffered some very poor press recently. It seems journalists can't resist reference to its cost and many professional reviewers reveal that either they failed to watch the entire movie (lazy fools they're paid to do this!) or low IQs. WATERWORLD rises head and shoulders above the recent crop of action based blockbusters. Batman Forever and Judge Dredd merely offer a distorted mirror view of our crime-ridden urban society whereas WATERWORLD carefully constructs a scenario where the rules of survival are very different.
Kevin Costner's character, known in true Campbellian-hero style only as "The Mariner," is the perfect survival machine for this all-water environment. He processes his own urine for the water content (not as some reports state "drinks his own piss") and the film opens rather daringly with a back-shot of Costner quite obviously peeing into a container. As a drifter he pilots a trimaran and trades anything the sea gives up to him. One of the director's real coups here is to make a yacht chase as thoroughly dynamic on film as any speed boat race. Indeed a basic juxtaposition of the film is sail power versus petrol burning craft. The (for want of a better term) baddies are called "Smokers" since they eschew windpower and as their leader Deacon (Dennis Hopper) dispenses an endless supply of cigarettes (not a comforting film for the pro-tobacco lobby this as the Smokers are crude and stupid villains). In this respect the film is far clearer than the comparable MAD MAX II where both sides are fighting over and using oil, yet a world oil-disaster is the cause of their apocalypse.
At one point in WATERWORLD there is a moment of pure surrealism as "Peter Gunn" is played and Hopper and his cronies are pushed around in the wheeless shell of an automobile. This underlines the totality of the water shooting throughout the film. As you assume the mindset of a water-bound existence areas of pseudo-solid ground become surprisingly anachronistic and by the end of the movie when the legendary "dryland" is found I viewed our world of greenery and wildlife in a new light of enhanced beauty.
This film definitely follows the currently dominant 3-Act plotting model and divides thus: In Act 1 the Mariner arrives at the Atoll and attempts trade but is captured for being a mutant. As he is being slowly put to death there is a mass Smoker attack which successfully breaches the drift-peoples defenses. In the ensuing mayhem Costner accepts heroine Helen's bargain to provide escape for her and the mysterious girlchild Enola.
In Act 3 Costner rescues Tina Majorino's little girl from Hoppers stronghold and because of this he and the remaining drift-people find dryland, although the Mariner chooses to return to the sea.
It is Act 2 which distinguishes WATERWORLD from the its fellow action adventures such as MAD MAX III; BEYOND THUNDERDOME. There is a biting sexual tension between Kevin Costner and Jeanne Tripplehorn that electrifies the screen, her sudden disrobement amidst the emptiness of the ocean is as astonishing as his rejection of her. As my partner Jackie put it "Kevin Costner beating up women and little girls!" Portrayed is no ordinary hero but a brutalised man stripped of any culture by the need to survive. Costner takes his anti-hero further even than Mel Gibson's portrayal in MAD MAX II and I started to wonder if there was a misogynist subtext to WATERWORLD. Maybe "a man's best friend is his boat and there ain't no woman good enough for him" was the film's message? Thankfully this was not so and the Mariner turns out to be waiting for real love rather than the ancient bargain of sex for shelter. A thoroughly un-feminist middle then, as Tripplehorn has nowhere to turn within the claustrophobic confines of the small boat. The destruction of Costner's gimmick-rigged trimaran marks the end of this mid-section and amidst the wreckage left by Hopper's ambush and abduction of the girlchild our antagonistic couple finally make-love simply because there is no reason not to do so.
WATERWORLD is quite a long movie (120 minutes) and it would have been tempting for the production team to make cuts in this middle chapter. Thankfully if there were any cuts made they were from the Mariner's commando style entry of the Smokers' stronghold (the revelation of which is one of the films most breathtaking moments and explains sloppy-criticisms of "where does the fuel for the jet-skis come from" (Kaleidoscope--shame on you Radio Four)). This sequence is given a strange narrative air by Majorino telling the Smoker second in command how "he (The Mariner) has killed lots of people (as Costner silently dispatches some guards) and he is going to rescue me." She announces this as if it was free-form verse and the stealthy fight-action gains a bizarre poetic edge.
Finally WATERWORLD boasts a frisson as moving and yet less sensationalistic than PLANET OF THE APES's Statue of Liberty buried on the beach moment. When we descend beneath the waves we are taken through the watery remains of a modern city we feel not only the shock of seeing our civilisation in ruins but Tripplehorn's character's despair that Costner has no source of soil from dryland only what he salvages. To me this underlines the emotional surety of the film as well as its highly involving projection of the future. Like SEVEN SAMURAI you are left wanting more, wondering where the Mariner will go next and what he will find alone out on the ocean.
-- Allan Toombs http://www.cityscape.co.uk/users/bt18/atoombs.html mailto:toombs@cityscape.co.uk
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