(Caution: Contains mild spoilers.)
It has a rickety, sweet kind of jazz, this film. Sometimes the timing’s off. Sometimes it’s on. At all times, though, it has some kind of beat running through it. Whether it’s provided by cars or cockerels or clattering keys, it always has some kind of beat.
Now, straight away, it’s important to acknowledge that this isn’t always the kind of beat you can dance to. But it’s equally important to accept that this is a film where it’s not always meant to be. It is a film swayed by the rhythms of the lifestyles and living standards of the characters on screen, not one that tries at all times to impose a contradictory melody over the top of all that. As such, it is grubby in places, and dull. And frustrating. There is the sense on occasion that people are grasping too fervently for the right word, and from there to give their chosen words meaning.
Yet, when they succeed in that, which happens far more frequently than not, the film finds a tenderness and, yes, a truth that marks it out from others you may have seen about similar situations.
A few of these truths are ones that might be considered universal – the comments on the spread of big business, on the doings of bastards worldwide, both then (1960) and now.
Some, however, are more specific, and arguably targeted at a slimmer portion of the audience. The portion that are primarily wanting to see the type of film that some advance rumours have promised them, a film about the evolution of a writer, and about the finding of one’s own voice. Now, there are some – many perhaps – who might mock that notion for being simplistic, or otherwise just daft and out of touch with how the adult world works. After all, it’s the sort of notion that turns up in kids’ films isn’t it, like in The Little Mermaid or Shrek, this idea of finding and embracing your true identity?
It’s that kind of argument, though, which suggests that the biggest problem for emerging artists in any field is not that everyone’s a critic, but that everyone’s a cynic. Ideas like ‘truth’, in the romantic, Bohemian sense, have, in some circles, come to seem so pat, so banal, that it appears a large portion of the audience for any fiction, written or filmed, no longer expects or demands it. I grant you that the counter-argument about more and more film-goers being interested purely in big-budget special effects, big breasts, and big bastard robots instead of feel and mood and character has long since become trite itself, and yet it daily requires more and more effort to see beyond that argument. Once word has gotten around about The Rum Diary being slow and moody, and about the way that people talk and want to write about their anger instead of just smashing stuff up – as it has begun to – it won’t do as well at the box office as other films that are not the same way. Which means it will not be seen by as many people.
Which is a hellish shame.
Not because The Rum Diary is the funniest film since Withnail & I, or even the best film based on a Hunter S. Thompson book, because it isn’t, on either count (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas still retains that honour). Rather, this is because it knows a feeling – a clutch of feelings – and it runs with them and gets inside them and, if you’re willing to give it your attention, makes those feelings come alive. It contains a lot of talk about ideas, and is more incisive and original in its judgements on some than on others, but, in this way, it displays an understanding of the way in which sometimes talk and words are what comprise a given person’s way of passing through the world.
To this end, it doesn’t shy away from scenes of sitting at a typewriter, or from lengthy conversations, but then, neither does it shy away from voiceless things, and from putting on clear display those times when words are inadequate or even just plain bloody useless. At all times, however, this film gives those words, and that way of expressing and receiving ideas a deep and full respect.
And perhaps the importance of that kind of thing is overlooked in the current cinematic climate, is dismissed as being naïve, or ‘idealistic’. But here is a film that is unafraid to step up and say that it needs to be looked into again, and which has the capacity, one would hope, to make certain viewers remember how to try to be that way themselves. Indeed, at its heart is a bravely existential quest, which, if considered in a different way, may well seem utterly ludicrous, but which when looked at through the eyes of the protagonists (especially Depp’s character, Paul Kemp), has real meaning. This is a film that follows its characters in pursuit of something that actually, utterly matters to them, and wants to make it matter to its audience in turn.
This is, however, not something that comes across very well in the advertising for the film, displaying very clearly (if inadvertently) the duality and conflict at the film’s core. The trailer and the posters suggest that it is much more concerned with the greasy glamour of this early part of the Hunter S. Thompson myth. That it is a shiny, wasted-looking roadtrip through the main streets of some exotic clime (Puerto Rico, in this case), with occasional stop-offs indoors to drink. That The Rum Diary is a jumped-up fantasy of the Gonzo lifestyle, in the same way that Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing is. Those that go into the film expecting that will probably be disappointed, and may well have overlooked the deeper themes running through both films, failing to understood that Fear and Loathing… could only have turned out how it did after Hunter had been through the 60’s, and that, at the end of the 50’s, he was in a very different situation. As was America.
Bearing that in mind, Bruce Robinson makes the right decision early on in the film to get on board with that early Hunter, and the preoccupations of that time, rather than trying to shoehorn more mayhem into places it doesn’t necessarily fit. And it is when he makes that decision that the film truly becomes interesting, and sets itself apart from the pack, as it were.
It is, in light of the earlier discussion of cynicism as regards Kemp’s desire to find his voice as a writer, perhaps entirely fitting that this moment should involve a mermaid. Or, at least what seems to be a mermaid at first. In fact, the seeming-apparition that emerges from the water next to the pedello Kemp has taken out for an evening drift is a young woman named Chenault; a beautiful young woman who immediately captivates the writer, and seems to symbolise all the glamour of the new American rich swarming into Puerto Rico. At this point, it appears that expectations of this film becoming a gloriously diverting romantic adventure are about to be realised, with Depp doing one of his sublime double-takes as the lady swims away, hinting that more such shenanigans are to come. And yet, the line he utters at that point is a far more accurate, and surprisingly subtle, indication of things to come: ‘Oh God, why did she have to happen? Just when I was doing so well without her.’
This is a film that, rather than being constructed à la the trailer purely to fulfil some tropical caper quotient, is very much of the opinion that life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. Plotwise, it could almost be accused of being composed solely of red herrings, and of having a cop-out ending – if, that is, it weren’t so defiantly focused more on the life and less so on the plans. This teased romantic subplot does indeed lead somewhere, but not perhaps the somewhere one might expect, and it doesn’t come to dominate the film in the way that other events do. And this is simply because these other events/personages just get in the way. Indeed, Depp’s question is one that his character could well ask about most events in the film. Particularly the arrival and insistent reappearances of Moberg.
Ah, Moberg… The closest link this film has to Robinson’s masterpiece Withnail & I, and also, arguably, its closest link to Fear and Loathing…, Moberg is a riot in man’s (unwashed) clothing. A booze junkie who regularly consumes ‘470 proof’ alcohol and has a collection of old Hitler speeches on record. As well as an SS hat, lurking about somewhere amongst his belongings. He is also, on that evidence, another piece of the puzzle that doesn’t fit in with the holiday hi-jinks vibe suggested by the trailers (which probably explains why he doesn’t really turn up in them too much), though he is crucial to Robinson’s take on the issues and events involved. Rather than attempting at all times to glory in the brilliance of Kemp (and, therein, the brilliance of Hunter S.), he approaches the figure in much the same way that Thompson did himself, from time to time; with an iconoclastic, unsympathetic, but still drearily affectionate eye (the ending of Thompson’s essay, ‘The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved’ comes to mind).
There is a lot of misery here, and confusion, and even a touch of self-loathing. Perhaps too much for the film to be fully uplifting at the end. It is, after all, scathingly cynical in its own way. Hunter’s brand of cynicism, however, (and, clearly, Robinson’s) is one born from anger and frequently channelled into an attempt to rectify a situation, or at least to confront a problem head-on, even if this is only through some kind of art. The downer periods are necessary, are essential for this approach to be fully understood – it is hope in spite of, and because of, hopelessness. Pissing in the wind, perhaps, but always keeping focused on where you want to aim.
A tricky business, we can all agree.
Certainly, it is a tough ask to persist with that approach, both in life and art. To wear at all times not rose-tinted spectacles, but dark glasses so as the daytime world outside doesn’t hurt your eyes/your head too much, even as you refuse to stop looking at it. As such, the film is prone to maudlin moments, to periods of quiet, unsettling reflection. All of which are in keeping with the situation Kemp is in, and which are important to the story’s progression. Moreover, for those who may be/have been in similar situations, this is (as it ever is, when you discover one of your idols was once in a similar pedello to that in which you’re currently adrift) curiously cathartic. The few scenes in which mention is made of his former (more romantic) aspirations of being a straight up novelist are handled with a kindness and an understanding that is refreshing and all too rare – even within the world of the film, writing like that is viewed either as a waste of time (by Kemp’s boss, Lotterman), or as a means to exploit and manipulate others out of their cash (by the property magnate, Sanderson).
But then, the whole film is a dialogue between ‘artistic integrity’ and ‘commercialism’. At the edges of the narrative, at all times there is the notion that whatever scraps of paradise Puerto Rico at that time may have held, they are crumbling, in as much a state of disrepair as the American-run newspaper that Kemp finds himself producing shonky horoscopes for. Furthermore, it is increasingly evident that those spaces are being taken over by banks, by business interests, about to be filled up with hotels like a Monopoly board; indeed, that, as with a monopoly board, those hotels are going to dominate income, and result in those that don’t have them going very swiftly skint. Here again, the film could be accused of naivety, of a kind of simplicity in its outlook and its politics, and, worse still, of being hypocritical – it is, after all a big business venture itself, to a degree; a Hollywood product, with arguably the biggest male star in the world as its marquee name – and yet in its freewheeling attitude to narrative, and in the way in which it is frequently more attentive to the hangover than the binge (from the opening scene of a particularly ruinous morning after onwards), it remains stridently faithful to its low-down, grubby, truth-seeking ideals. It plays the game just enough to give itself chance to have its core ideas heard.
Indeed, when the time comes to choose between the potentially-limitless glamour of the nouveau riche island life, and the potentially-limitless (judging by Moberg, at least) squalor of a life of investigative journalism/writing, Robinson makes the same choice as Kemp does. His film demonstrates a familiarity and fascination with both sides of the coin, but is only ever really hoping for it to land on tails when it finally falls. And this is the right choice for the material. As Withnail & I demonstrated, Robinson has an affinity for those who may not always meet their own high expectations, moral or otherwise, and, moreover, refuses to abandon them unacknowledged to their plight. As a director (and writer), he seems fully willing to follow such characters doggedly, wherever they might be headed, and, in that respect as well as others, the ending that the film reaches is entirely fitting. It is not ambiguous in the sense of it being a cliffhanger, but, rather, it presents a picture of a man figuratively at the bottom of a cliff, intent on beginning another long climb.
Still, it isn’t a particularly glorious, celebratory ending, and certainly not in keeping with the way in which most other recent films or TV series (such as State of Play or The Wire) have tackled the subject of investigative journalism. In failing to deliver a showdown between the two conflicting parties, it does somewhat go against accepted cinematic conventions on such matters. It would be more than understandable to find that a large portion of the audience consider it a cop-out. After all, final reel showdowns can still be phenomenally entertaining occurrences (most recently, those in Drive and The Ides of March have thrilled me immensely), and so the absence of one here (between the human players, at least) can be seen as another reason for any potential commercial failure on the film’s part.
And that is, as I mentioned earlier, a problem, in so far as it will probably stop as many people as should see it from seeing it – at least until it is released for home viewing. But, from an ideological standpoint, it is an honest move. To have the business dealings and the intimations of corruption overcome by something as seemingly trifling as petty jealousy is a left turn, but one that, amidst the feel and sensibilities of The Rum Diary, feels right. That it gives far more time to the little foibles and shenanigans of the underdogs than to those of the ‘bastards’ is admirable, and, in the manner in which it does it, rare. There is genuine and surprising warmth to the minute-long scene in which Kemp breaks free from watching a cockfight and stumbles across a beautifully bedraggled little alleyway, taking pictures of people and the burnt-out carcasses of cars. It is a note thrown in but not dwelled on, an improvisational tweak that adds to the film’s developing mood rather than detracting from it. That warmth, again unexpected, is there at the end of one car racing scene (teased in the trailer as being something a little different to how it actually is). Whilst the film comes to seem, in terms of most environs selected in the latter half of the film, almost anti the standardised escapist drama it could have been, it does hold an escapist sensibility all its own.
If things are going to go wrong, and if the bastards are always going to find a way to grind you down, then, this film suggests, you must always try and make the most of the moments before they do. A wonderful example of this, and a rare point at which standard cinematic escapist tropes and The Rum Diary’s escapism overlap, occurs in the final third of the film, and serves as the culmination of the romantic arc. Sitting in the scummy apartment that Kemp shares with his photographer Sala, Kemp and Chenault share a moment of clarity, staring deep into each other’s eyes, as gentle piano music rises. Cut to Kemp behind a shower curtain, and Chenault’s hand reaching out to pull that curtain back, stepping, still-clothed, into the spray. Sharing a kiss. Cut to the bed, and the beginnings of a tender, soft-focus love scene –
Cut to one of Moberg’s Hitler recordings blaring out from the other room. Cut to Kemp, cock-blocked and flustered, walking into the other room to discover Moberg sitting in a chair by the window, wearing his SS hat.
Harsh. But it is precisely Moberg’s classless act of cockblocking that provides a perfect summation of Robinson’s approach. There are several moments throughout the film when he presents the viewer with the tantalising hint that this may become another glossy travelogue romance, bathed in sun and soaked in ocean breakers. But, each time, he undercuts these moments, or, rather, just cuts into them, going for some below-the-surface thing. Or, quite often, has some bastard (either a purposeful one, or an accidental one, such as Moberg) enter from stage left and undercut them from within. Indeed, by the time that the latter turns up in his SS hat, it is firmly assured that nobody will be mistaking anyone else for a mermaid anymore.
This, perhaps more than any other point in the film, explains why its commercial prospects, despite Depp’s star power, are less-than-rosy. It is one of those brave (even if not entirely successful) films that attempts to mobilise the audience’s mind to considering concepts that might otherwise go overlooked in such a movie, to wake the audience up from the dream, as it were – the one thing that the film’s arch-capitalist advises Kemp that one should never do. In that way, it is a truly, if subtly, subversive piece of entertainment. It praises Hunter S. Thompson, but it praises the reasons and approach that underpins the mythology of the man, rather than relying solely upon the surface tenets of that mythology. It doesn’t give the people what they might think they want – boozy wreckage everywhere – and, therefore, doesn’t really give them what they may have been tempted to pay for. What it does provide, however, is (to paraphrase and re-appropriate the Oscar Wilde adage that Kemp quotes about midway through) a sense of the value of things, rather than simply the price. Of the value of thinking hard about your dreams before chasing them, rather than simply buying into somebody else’s just because you saw it advertised somewhere. Of the value of carefully chosen thoughts and words over indiscriminate action. Of not simply being passively cynical and allowing various heinous exploitations to continue, but of at least trying to channel that cynicism into rage and from there into some degree of change.
This is, of course, a very grandiose aim, and, at times, it is an idea above the film’s station, but the ebullient contrarianism of the piece has an undeniable charm and zing. It is a film in which things that you want to happen don’t, things that you don’t want to happen do (often, but not always, because of bastards), and which suggests that the best you can usually manage in the aftermath is to write something honest about the way you feel, hoping that the right people get to read it.
The big screen of cinema, with its still-inherent promise of fantasy and escapism, is a tricky medium for such a message, told in such an at-times spare and moody tone as this; as some commentators have suggested, it may well be better suited for the smaller screen, and for repeated watching at home. However, if a viewer is willing to accept that with The Rum Diary, as with life, sometimes the timing is going to be on and at other times off, and is willing to sit still through the parts that aren’t made to be danced to, then it’s likely they’ll not only enjoy it, but truly appreciate what it is trying to do.
Because, after all, it really does have a rickety, sweet kind of jazz.
