G | 1h 30min | Drama | 1993
Director Michael Anderson’s film ponders the inner battle between a reckless conviction that believes that man is no more than a beast and a responsible one that corrects him: He’s human. No more, but certainly no less.
Aristocratic writer-critic Humphrey Van Weyden (Christopher Reeve) and petty thief and trickster Flaxen Brewster (Catherine Mary Stewart) end up shipwrecked near San Francisco. Rescued mid-sea by the seal-hunting schooner “Ghost,” they’re at the mercy of the erudite, but nihilistic Capt. Wolf Larsen (Charles Bronson). Mulish, Larsen promises a return to land, but only after months of seal-hunting in the Sea of Japan. Meanwhile, he coerces effete Van Weyden into the role of cabin boy, who must earn his keep by cleaning pots, peeling potatoes, dumping garbage, and making and serving tea.
Contemptuous of Van Weyden’s skittishness, Larsen still warms to the intellectual stimulation from their discussions; something he can’t afford with his ill-bred crew. Yet Larsen is out to prove that the law of the sea is the Darwinian law of the jungle. Might is right. Weakness is wrong. If the weak survive, it’s only at the whim of the strong.
Reeve and Bronson play against type. The physically imposing, bull-necked, broad-shouldered 41-year-old Reeve, having played Superman on screen is initially submissive here. Ridiculously handsome, and 6 feet 4 inches tall, here he looks even taller. Gnarled 72-year-old Bronson, used to playing decent tough guys, plays a bully; at least seven inches shorter, he looks even tinier next to Reeve. Both use that physical contrast to play off each other’s contrasting characters.
Yes, headaches may announce Larsen’s blind spells, but they hint at a more dangerous inner blindness.
Both Brewster and Van Weyden start as poseurs. A pickpocket, she’s far from a lady. A dilettante who, by his own admission, Van Weyden has “never been much of a man,” and he’s far from a gentleman. This voyage starts transforming them; she becomes more of a lady, he, more of a gentleman. They manage to sink the blind and blinding belief Larsen peddles: that morality has no meaning.
Redefining Masculinity
The film, based on Jack London’s novel, concedes that the strong and ruthless usually overpower the weak and kind, but asks: Must they?Brewster initially uses her womanly charms on gullible gentlemen. Later, when she realizes that Van Weyden saved her life and protected her dignity by hiding her lowly origins from Larsen and the crew, she reflexively asks what he’d like in return. She’s humbled when Van Weyden tells her that he protected her because it was the right thing to do, not because he wanted to exploit her vulnerability.
When Brewster and Van Weyden abandon ship to escape Larsen’s planned ruin for everyone, they take more of themselves with them and less of the persons Larsen wants them to be.
Before he takes man and woman on board, Larsen isn’t used to sparing lives that are at his mercy. He’d rather kill than be killed. But Van Weyden’s willingness to go beyond himself, even for those who harm him, secretly eats at Larsen. He wonders privately if he’s been blind all along, even if his blindness is catching up with him only now.
Larsen figures he’s some self-made Nietzschean superman undiminished by dependence or the small matter of compassion. Then, despite himself, he starts imitating the real superman on board, Van Weyden, whose generosity only makes him stronger. The emasculation enforced on Van Weyden only backfires, bringing out a heroic masculinity that shrugs off the veneer of timidity that had been holding him back.
