The Emerald Forest (John Boorman, 1985)
Boorman has always had a strong, mystical relationship with the land, as well as an experimental side which leads him to sometimes make films which some complain are incomprehensible or just plain silly. Combine this with Boorman's visionary use of spectacular visuals, especially of the green kind, and you get the strange, yet wonderful convergence which is
The Emerald Forest. I remember watching this film and
Back to the Future on the same day in 1985 just before I drove home for a family vacation, and all I could think about was getting my family to go with me to watch both of these at the largest theatre imaginable. We did and everybody liked both. At the time, I would have considered the two movies comparable in both being excellent, but nowadays, I can see
Back to the Future as a more-perfect film, but
The Emerald Forest is for those film buffs who are willing to dive off the deep end and just become immersed in the inexplicable things which cinema can accomplish, even when working in something seemingly "commercial".
The Emerald Forest is about an American hydroelectric engineer named Bill (Powers Boothe) who lives at the edge of the Brazilian rain forest with his wife (Meg Foster) and their young boy and daughter. The boy is very adventurous and always walking off, and one day he disappears right from under his parents' noses. After 10 years of constant searching, they are no closer to finding their boy, but Bill and a sarcastic Brazilian journalist agree to make a dangerous trip along the river because Bill has learned of an unheard-of tribe. Boorman reinforces many of his themes from earlier films during this journey into "the heart of darkness" (although in many ways, it's a journey into the light). As expressed in
Deliverance, we see man's voracious appetite to utilize natural resources, this time by destroying the rain forest for profit and modern expansion but we also see the price it has on native human and animal populations. We also see, as Boorman demonstrated in
Excalibur, how the Land and the King (or any Ruler or aware human for that matter) can be one. When the Land is healthy, so is humankind, and the opposite is very often also true. What Bill eventually finds is a world in the Emerald Forest, where the Invisible People (the tribe which kidnapped and now harbors his son as the tribe's Prince) attempt to maintain one with nature, including the use of natural hallucinogenic drugs to come more in contact with oneself and the environment. However, the cannibalistic Fierce People are the Dark Side of this Paradise, and
they come in contact with Bill's own machine gun which they use to trade with the European Brazilians in order to become more violent and capable of enslaving the peaceful Invisible People. So, even when Bill can do something as seemingly-benign to the native culture and environment as try to find his long-lost son, he ends up corrupting the Emerald Forest and helping to turn it into a world rampant with blood.
Bill's teenage son Tommy ("Tomme") is played by Boorman's son, Charley Boorman, and he gives a terrifically naturalistic performance. Most of the film is in Portuguese or native Brazilian dialects and therefore it's subtitled. However, the acting is even more specifically physical and quite similar in many ways to silent film acting. In this way, it's very impressive, especially from all the native actors who spend most of the film in various states of undress and seem quite natural in doing so. The society, culture and basic manner of living their life is all very believeable in the Invisible People's world, and yes, it does involve a manner of drug-taking, at least for the warriors of the tribe who use their "trips" to gather information important to their people by utilizing what each warrior's spirit animal is able to pass on to their human counterpart. Yes,
The Emerald Forest casts a wide net; not only does it depict Western Civilization's encroachment on native peoples and their lands, but it does it in the context of an adventure film which turns into a suspense/revenge flick. Add the fact that the film is deeply about family and having to make difficult choices about family from both the perspective of the parent and from the child trying to grow up and start his own new family, and you can see how some viewers might think that the film bites off more than it can chew or that it is just too unfocused. However, for those who fall under the hypnotic imagery of Phillippe Rousselot, the intense sound effects, the offbeat music by Brian Gascoigne and Junior Homrich, the utterly convincing acting, and the exotic world depicted, it isn't a big leap for all but the most-jaded filmwatcher to go along with the film to its conclusion. I'm sure that even in our own paradise here at MoFo that there are a few unbelievers who feel that
The Emerald Forest falls into Boorman's category of the ridiculous, right next to
Zardoz and
Exorcist II: The Heretic. I'm getting to this in the next paragraph.
There is no way the exhilarating drug-tinged scenes in
The Emerald Forest where the hawk flies to the waterfall and finds the tribe's sacred stones and Tomme experiences it can be compared to the utter idiocy in
Exorcist II where a "possesed" group of African moths invades Washington, D.C. There's no comparison between Sean Connery roaming the countryside in an oversize diaper in
Zardoz and Tomme wearing a similar piece of clothing in this film to cover his private parts. Boorman is a visionary, but I admit that sometimes he crosses the line from visionary to lunatic, but
The Emerald Forest stays firmly on the side of rationality, plausible storytelling, and if you don't believe those two, at least it fits safely into the realm of films which have the courage of their convictions whether "rational" minds question what the hell is going on. Just relax, kick back and throw away your preconceptions and you should have absolutely no problems with
The Emerald Forest. That is unless you have one of those twitches or nervous reactions to seemingly-unrealistic actions in movies. In that case, I suggest you turn this movie off and never watch another one again because you don't really enjoy films. Just look out your window and be overjoyed with the monotony of what's outside. You never know; maybe even in this day and age you can make some money writing about, sketching or photographing your neighbors. Just be sure to get their permission and hope that nobody else thinks that your life's work and its expression is unbelievable and/or unrealistic.
I now want to mention a random list of things I like about
The Emerald Forest:
Tommy walking away in the opening scene to strange music;
"Momme" saying "Hallelujah";
The Brazilian journalist's smartass comments and utter insensitivity to the family's loss;
What happens to the Braziian journalist;
The swimming snakes;
The cannibals;
The search for the Sacred Stones;
The meeting of Tomme and Dadde;
Tomme's Mating Ritual;
The way the Native Girls gossip;
The "Trips";
Surprising action scenes;
"Dadde's" Recovery;
"Tomme's" return to the Dead World;
Father's discussions with "Dadde";
The Whorehouse;
The Electric Wires;
The Bar;
The Frogs;
"Maybe I made a mistake" "You?";
The Dam;
The Lightning;
The Hawk Soaring;
The Tribal Drums;
The Final Scroll.
"Good Night, and Good Luck."
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