WHITE HUNTER, BLACK HEART
A film review by Shane R. Burridge
Copyright 1996 Shane R. Burridge
White Hunter, Black Heart (1990) 110m.
Film based on a book based on a film based on a book. Or, to be more precise: Clint Eastwood's film of Peter Viertel's roman-a-clef about John Huston's film of C. S. Forester's novel `The African Queen'. Huston's production was quite an ordeal. His cast and crew shot on location in the Belgian Congo; their steamboat sank in the river; filming was delayed by rain; and nearly everyone contracted malaria or dysentery. Eastwood/Viertel's retelling instead chooses to focus on Huston's ambition to shoot a wild elephant. Was his prime motivation for travelling to Africa to enchance his film's authenticity or pick up a hunting permit for a few hundred dollars and go on safari? It's the latter argument that drives Eastwood's monomaniacal director John Wilson, who doesn't care about his creditors, his producers, his audience, or even possibly his film. He appears to be the worst type of character to let be in charge of a film on location. But Wilson manages to persuade everyone to let him have his due - he is funny, cynical, gruff, opinionated, and articulate. You can see how Eastwood was attracted to this role, particularly in the scenes when he cuts someone down to size with one of his caustic monologues. His performance, whether it is based on Huston or not (let's face it, a cigar-chewing, gravelly-voiced director isn't exactly a stretch for Eastwood), dominates everything on screen.
Eastwood/Wilson keeps himself at a far remove from any other characters and it is only through his peer/mentor relationship with the more responsible screenwriter Pete (Jeff Fahey) that we see him at his most approachable. Pete provides the voice of Wilson's conscience, i.e. the voice he does not listen to. But it's clear that Wilson is calling the shots, even in Pete's domain: early in the film Wilson writes the lead characters out of his script by killing them at the story's conclusion because as a film `god' it is his right to do so. We naturally expect the same reasoning behind his killing of an animal, a notion Pete (who sees elephants as timeless beings) balks at. If a godlike human is superior to his human contemporaries does that also confer him superiority over a godlike animal? The answer to this question is where the film seems to be heading from the outset. We do at least see a change in Wilson's demeanor at the conclusion - upon one character's utterance of the film's title, it looks as if he has finally been struck by a grim revelation. It's ironic that Wilson, given to lengthy invectives against his travelling companions, is brought down to earth by nothing more than four words. He is on the receiving end of his own advice to Peter: strip away all complications and keep it simple. Eastwood's film itself is also deceptively simple - it ranks among his very best. Unfortunately, the public, more used to seeing Eastwood as a hero with a gun and not an anti-hero with a gun, largely ignored it upon release. Catch it if you can.
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