Walker

Roger Ebert must have been in a particularly foul mood the day he wrote his review of Alex Cox's Walker and gave the poor film zero stars. He's frequently been far more indulgent of batty directorial invention (giving, for example, three stars to Mike Figgis's out there Hotel). It's true that Walker inspired a good deal of ignominy, as a confessedly "anti-capitalist," "sort of anti-American" movie (Cox's words) might be expected to do. But one wouldn't expect Ebert to jump on such a band-wagon, although he does sum up the standard case against Walker efficiently enough ("a pointless and increasingly obnoxious exercise in satire" with no laughs, witless anachronisms, etc.).

None of what bothers Ebert bothers me that much, which is not to say that I find Walker an especially accomplished work. It is, however, if taken in the right way -- but this is a difficulty, as I'll elaborate -- quite interesting. The jokey tone and the sometimes over-cute anachronisms (Coke bottles, newsweeklies, helicopters) are undeniably hard for some to take because they are not out-and-out Pythonesque or Mel Brooksian, but rather play off against a central story-line that is politically serious, with definite implications for our time, and an imperialist central character who is ferociously incarnated by Ed Harris. It's the mixing of tones that is tough, not one tone or another. The anachronistic approach mixing modern technology with older events is familiar from the quasi-documentary television series You Are There, and has been used in other films such as Peter Watkins's La Commune (Paris 1871) and Gualtieri Jacopetti's and Franco Prosperi's Goodbye Uncle Tom.

William Walker was what was called in the 1850s a "filibuster," an American adventurer who tried to push "manifest destiny" to the south of the United States even as the more conventional version of manifest destiny was being pushed westward. A number of unsuccessful expeditions were undertaken to try to win territories such as Mexico, Cuba, and Cental America for the United States, with an eye towards incorporating them as slave states. Walker led several such expeditions into Mexico and Central America, and on his Nicaraguan journey in 1855-1857, he gained a measure of control over the country, though it lasted barely a year. On a subsequent visit to Honduras in 1860, he was seized and executed at the tender age of 36.

Those are the barest bones of the story; it is terribly complex in its details and repays study within the overall context of the politics and diplomacy of the time. (A book on the subject I'm currently reading and enjoying is Robert E. May's The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire, which is what prompted me to put Walker in my Netflix queue.)

Here is where taking Alex Cox's Walker "in the right way" poses a challenge. Cox is very free with facts, in the usual way of historical romancers, and his freedom does bother me, also for the usual reason: The actual facts are much more interesting. I have to go to the histories to figure out what the director and screenwriter (Rudy Wurlitzer) made of the material, and as is often the case, that involves a bit of let-down. However, even allowing them their interpretation and their artistic license, as seems fair, the question remains: Who is this film possibly for? The number of viewers who bring enough to it going in to make much of what Cox and Wurlitzer have done is vanishingly small. The number who will follow up thoroughly enough to gain that perspective after seeing the film is way smaller still, human nature being what it is. And even the group that could enjoy the film on a more simplistic level is pretty tiny, because the movie is just not set up to be conventionally enjoyable or even "readable." For example, although I quite liked the "fall of Saigon" vibe with the helicopter in the final scenes, it's going to be lost on the overwhelming majority of most conceivable audiences (outside film festivals and Citerion DVD buyers, perhaps).

So, as with some other films that I like very much (more than Walker) -- Paul Schrader's Mishima, Robert Altman's Buffalo Bill and the Indians, Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie -- I cannot imagine who the directors thought they could reach, or how that microscopic sub-set of humanity could possibly justify the big studio investment that all four of these films had. I know that Jonathan Rosenbaum has often put forward the notion that mass audiences would embrace aesthetically or politically radical films if they were given the proper exposure to them; but I think that's wrong, I see no real world evidence for it. These films I mention began life under the auspices of marketing juggernauts, but they are essentially un-marketable (again, outside festivals and Criterion, which put out both the Walker and Mishima DVDs). I'm glad that recondite big budget follies occasionally get made with the full weight of Hollywood technical talent, acting talent, musical talent (The Clash member Joe Strummer's score for Walker is outstanding). But man, someone takes a bath on these.

POSTSCRIPT: I love this definition of "recondite" that I found through Google: "abstruse: difficult to penetrate; incomprehensible to one of ordinary understanding or knowledge." Yes, that would be Walker's problem.

UPDATE (6/28/2009): To push the Walker / Mishima comparison a bit: I doubt there are many William Walker experts who would find what Cox and Wurlitzer have done with his story to be especially satisfactory, although they might it...hmm, interesting. On the other hand, I doubt there are many Yukio Mishima experts who wouldn't be riveted by what Paul Schrader made of his story, although they might have a quibble here and a quibble there. Mishima is a difficult film, but also a gorgeous, provocative, and heart-breaking film for those who will take the trouble.