Although
it originates in a novel published a hundred years ago and has been translated
to the cinema several times, most memorably in Zoltan Korda’s brilliant 1939
adaptation, the new version of The Four
Feathers seems surprisingly — and, no doubt, accidentally — apposite at
this moment in the 21st century. A motion picture in the great
tradition of colonial adventure (a tradition that includes such stirring works
as Gunga Din, Lawrence of Arabia, and The
Man Who Would Be King), The Four
Feathers celebrates the superiority of British virtues at the Empire’s peak
of glory, the reign of Queen Victoria. Its story of exciting action, noble
sacrifice, and military triumph in the Sudan constitutes one of the many
versions of the great English epic of the Imperial past. Yet, this latest Feathers also suggests some important
parallels with the present, when the world’s new super power is threatening
another imperialist incursion into a foreign land.
The movie’s major action takes place
in 1885, revolving around the Muslim uprising against the British that led to
the famous siege of Khartoum, which was eventually lifted by Kitchener. The
battles cost a great many lives, including that of the legendary General
“Chinese” Gordon. Gordon, a typical English hero of the time, led his troops
into battle armed only with a swagger stick, a Bible, and his spectacular self
righteousness. When a regiment of cavalry, the Royal Cumbrians, is ordered to
the Sudan, its most accomplished young officer, Harry Feversham (Heath Ledger),
suddenly informs his best friends and his fiancée, Ethne (Kate Hudson), that he
accepted a commission only to satisfy his father, a general, and has no desire
to go to war, no yearning for glory, nor even any interest in serving in the
army. The confession and his resignation disgrace him in the eyes of his three
closest friends in the regiment and his betrothed. Each of them sends him a
white feather as a symbol of his cowardice and their contempt.
The movie never fully prepares the
viewer for Harry’s momentous confession. Nor does it prepare the viewer for his
second momentous act: his precipitous decision to journey to North Africa to
help his friends, now imperiled by the Sudanese rebels. But he somehow finds
his way to the Sudan and, disguising himself as an Arab, treks across the desert
in search of his comrades. For a brief time, he’s pressed into service with the
Muslim leader, known as the Mahdi. Along the way, he encounters danger and
betrayal, but also finds a friend — a brave, gentle, philosophical African
warrior named Abou (Djimon Hounsou), who saves his life and accompanies him on
his mission. That friendship not only helps him to survive, it ultimately
enables him to prove to his friends and himself the real measure of his courage
and loyalty.
In keeping with the film’s literary
and cinematic traditions, director Shekhar Kapur fills the screen with the
visible and obvious objects, gestures, and emotions of Empire, filtered through
the perpetual adolescence of the English aristocracy. He begins with the lads
playing a violent game of rugby (reminding us of Wellington’s assertion that
Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton), and proceeds to show the
troops in training, galloping over fields with lances at the ready, swinging
sabers, bayoneting dummies, parading in their splendid scarlet uniforms to
rousing martial tunes. Before the regiment marches off to war, a smug chaplain
delivers a blessing that thanks God for making them all English, and therefore
more deserving and better equipped to rule the world than any other nation
(sound familiar?).
To reflect the size and scope of his
subjects, Kapur favors an overhead camera for a number of crowd scenes, among
them a lovely view of another staple of the form, the military ball, where the
officers form a square in which Ethne and Harry dance to celebrate their
betrothal. That square foreshadows another, truly breathtaking shot of the
fabled British battle formation, also square, from which the troops hold off
the hordes of attacking Sudanese, who sweep down on all sides while the brave
soldiers hold them off. The camera also frequently lingers over the green
fields and gentle hills of England, with its grand houses and majestic public
structures; then contrasts those views with sweeping panoramas of the desert,
showing endless stretches of undulating sands with a tiny figure in the remote
distance struggling across the arid, empty landscape.
In its attention to the amplitude of
empire, the movie tends to neglect the personal and specific in favor of the
grand and general, handling the movements of masses of people with grace and
beauty, while maintaining a consistent stiffness and dullness in the
performances. The actors display a lot of tight lips and noble profiles,
without any other special conviction or presence. The characters talk about,
rather than act out, their emotions, so that although everyone says Ethne is a
magnet for all the young men, Kate Hudson actually seems remarkably pallid and
vapid. Heath Ledger never seems more than a rigid, emotionless cipher, and only
comes alive at all when he dons his Arab disguise — at which point he looks
disquietingly like another Western outcast, the so-called American Taliban,
John Walker Lindh. That resemblance suggests again the peculiar relevance of an
epic of a bygone era in this time and place, more than a hundred years and
thousands of miles from the glories of a world where Britannia ruled the waves
and the sun never set on the British Empire.
n
The Four Feathers, starring Heath
Ledger, Wes Bentley, Kate Hudson, Djimon Hounsou, Michael Sheen; based on the
novel by A. E. W. Mason; screenplay by Michael Schiffer and Hossein Amini;
directed by Shekhar Kapur. Cinemark Tinseltown; Hoyts Greece Ridge; Loews
Webster; Pittsford Plaza Cinema; Regal Culver Ridge; Regal Eastview; Regal
Henrietta.
This article appears in Sep 25 – Oct 1, 2002.
