227. Billy Budd

Song - Sloop John B (The Beach Boys)

Movie: Billy Budd (Peter Ustinov, 1962)

I am not the biggest fan of stories about simpleminded men who are almost magically pure of heart. I also don't like hypotheticals that can only exist in a manufactured reality; they usually come with an intellectually dishonest agenda and are not really worth engaging with. Ustinov's Billy Budd (I don't know about Herman Melville's novel) is guilty of both, turning its eponymous lead character into the ideal of purity to contrive what it sees as a complex moral quandary. I saw it as a thought exercise that's about as valuable and as hollow as the recent outrage over an AI chatbot's refusal to approve saying a racial slur to stop the nuclear holocaust. Both cases are dealing with a terrible scenario, conceived purely as a reason to be able to indulge in awful behavior and present it as honorable. The chatbot example is less nefarious too. That exists only to make online progressives mad. Billy Budd uses its dilemma to rationalise glorifying British Empire. 

We meet Billy Budd (Terence Stamp) when he is 'traded' from a merchant ship to a naval ship. The former has little say in the trade, as the wartime laws in place during Napoleon's battles against the British allow warships to get what they want. The story's pursuit of unsubtle metaphors becomes immediately obvious when Billy bids adieu to the Rights of Man (the name of his merchant ship) as his new shipmates are being summoned to witness a lashing of one of their crew. The lashing is administered by John Claggart (Robert Ryan), the ship's Master of Arms, and more importantly, the living embodiment of evil and cruelty, who enjoys humiliating and hurting the sailors, and happily drinks in their powerless hatred of him. Billy is the polar opposite of John, joyfully obedient, hopelessly optimistic, always happy to land a hand, and so pure that he is not able to tell a lie, hate, fear, despair or inflict pain. He is loved by his new shipmates and hated by Claggart because of his inability to break him. 

Stamp got an Oscar nomination for his role, and he and Ryan are indeed quite good, even though their roles are quite thankless. They play abstract concepts rather than actual human beings, though within that framework they admittedly do have some sharply written dialogue scenes between them. Those are needed if you are not a naval buff. During the opening credits every actor states his role on the ship as his name appears on screen. I had never heard of a 'Maintopman' or of a 'Master of Arms' and I still can't exactly explain what their function is. The film is made for people who can and for those who enjoy listening to gruff, rough men yell out naval commands. It fully indulges romantic fantasies about the masculine camaraderie and ideals of duty and strength borne out of life and work in the barren conditions of a (war)ship. I have never seen much romance in that, but did appreciate the sincere love the film has for naval rules, terms and habits, and the clear joy it gets out of showing people stand watch, adjust a sail, or prepare to get in formation for an important activity. 

Unfortunately the film loses much of its goodwill when it makes clear that all of this is mostly just in the service of its (im)moral dilemma. When Billy hits, and unwillingly, kills Claggart, after being falsely accused by him of plotting a mutiny, the film asks whether his fate should be decided by justice or patriotism (duty to the British laws and its war cause). The film chooses the latter, while pretending that everyone, including the people that are the victims of this decision, would/should agree that this is a worthy 'sacrifice' for the greater good - in the film's last scene the ship's crew unites and defeats the French. What makes all this even more obnoxious is that the choice presented here is a false one in the first place. Billy most definitely has other, more peaceful, ways of defending himself than hitting Claggart. The pureness of his heart can't change that he is responsible for the death of the man. It's not justice (see for evidence the American gun rights debate) to argue that murder should be forgiven just because the perpetrator is 'good' and the victim 'bad'. That the film presents both of them as self-evidently, objectively 'good' and 'evil' only makes matters worse. I was reminded of Matthew McConaughey's closing statement in A Time to Kill - imagine the same dilemma existing with Billy being black, or even just non-English. The filmmakers definitely aren't able to do so, and you get the feeling they'd shudder at the idea. It's worth noting that Robert Ryan is the only actor in the cast who speaks American English. 

226. The Wolf Man

Song - Bad Moon Rising (Creedence Clearwater Revival)

Movie: The Wolf Man (George Waggner, 1941)

There is no bad moon in The Wolf Man, nor a wolf dramatically howling at it. Modern werewolf stories have taken much of the symbolism and lore from this film, but not its tone. They luxuriate in their melodrmatic sensationalism, anguished transformations, their explicitly gruesome imagery, and the frightening idea of an unstoppable natural phenomenon turining ordinary, often decent, men, into agrresive animalistic killers who will stop at nothing that stands in their way. The Wolf Man is surprisingly much more grounded than that. The original script wanted the audience to question whether Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) really becomes a werewolf, or whether the transformation only happens in his mind. The studio demanded a literal transformation, but the original intent of the script is still very much visible in the film. The transformation is filmed in the most understated possible way - in a series of dissolves we see Chaney's legs become progressively hairier, until we see him in a full shot looking, not too convincingly, beastly as he roams through a foggy forest looking for a victim. 

Chaney Jr. doesn't spend too much time in his werewolf makeup either. He is mostly at home (basically, a castle) with his father, the aristocratic Sir John Talbot (Claude Rains), who is trying to convince his son that he is not actually a werewolf, but is experiencing a traumatic episode. Larry has a murky past; upon his arrival at his father's place, we learn that the two haven't seen each other in a long time and that they haven't always had the best relationship. We never learn exactly why, but it is evident (mostly through Chaney's great performance; even his seemingly confident easy-going flirting is imbued with a certain inexplicable ever-lingering hesitance and fear that always makes him slightly more awkward than he presents himself to be) that Larry is not a man who is fully comfortable in his own skin. Turning him into a werewolf makes that literal and allows the film to explore how Larry tries to make sense of his own unease with his place in the world. 

The film also uses Larry to explore how science and religion can be compatible with each other. Sir John keeps insisting to his son that his condition can be scientifically and rationally explained, as a conflict of the mind, and that "belief in the afterlife" can help ease such conflicts of the mind. It's to the film's credit that it earnestly believes in John's arguments, but unambigiously shows him to be wrong. Larry is indeed a werewolf, despite the fact that none of the rational townspeople, some of them respected doctors and detectives believe him. Nobody heeds the warnings of the travelling gypsies who keep telling everyone that they should be careful and do something about the werewolf before it's too late. Yes, writer Curt Siodmak is a German who came to Hollywood to escape the Nazi's, which is also why it's quite unfortunate that the film presents the gypsies as religious heretics who are ultimately responsible for the werewolf disease that is now disturbing this previously peaceful town.