Under the Volcano
1984VOTE NOW
| Universal Pictures | Release Date: June 13, 1984 |
Starring:
Albert Finney, Anthony Andrews, Carlos Riquelme, Dawson Bray, Ignacio López Tarso, Jacqueline Bisset, James Villiers, Jim McCarthy, José René Ruiz, Katy Jurado
Summary:
The last 24 hours in the life of Geoffrey Firmin, a lonely, depressed English consul who retreats to alcohol for solace.
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Although flawed by incoherence at moments, their version is a model of literary adaptation - intensely dramatic, sharply cinematic, and full of passionate performances. In all, it's quite a turnaround from Huston's last book-inspired effort, the misfired adaptation of Flannery O'Connor's amazing ''Wise Blood." [5 July 1984, p.25]
It falls upon Finney to dramatize the inner workings of a man gradually, unmistakably succumbing to oblivion. Finney is up to the task: The pungent poetry of Lowry's prose comes through in his pitch-perfect performance, with its exquisite turns of phrase, boozy bravado, and theatrical panache.
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Huston simply films the plot of Malcolm Lowry's modern-day gothic novel, turning a fevered interior vision into a cold, distant, exterior one—a documentary on the death of a drunk. As the tortured consul, Albert Finney has moments of technical brilliance, but Huston's direction gives him no inner life. The most impressive artistic contribution is that of cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa, whose painfully sharp images suggest something of what the novel is about.
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Unfortunately the cast members are made into symbols themselves, bereft of blood and emotion, under the direction of the great John Huston. It's like a death pageant, grueling and dismal and distant...It is a dreary process at best. And this film is a tedious and time-consuming study of decay and lost values, lost souls and lost empires. [13 July 1984, p.17]
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