The Four Feathers (2002)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The four feathers |
| Original title | The Four Feathers |
| Country of production |
United States United Kingdom |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2002 |
| length | 125 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Shekhar Kapur |
| script |
Michael Schiffer , Hossein Amini |
| production | Stanley R. Jaffe |
| music | James Horner |
| camera | Robert Richardson |
| cut | Steven Rosenblum |
| occupation | |
| |
The Four Feathers (original title The Four Feathers ) is a film by Shekhar Kapur from 2002 . It is based on the novel of the same name by the author Alfred Edward Woodley Mason from 1902, which has already been filmed several times (1915, 1921, 1929, 1939 , 1955 and 1977) as a cinema or television production. It is about a young officer in the British Army, who in the Victorian era, shortly before his unit left for Sudan , said goodbye to the military and therefore, according to the conventions of his time, to both his three best friends and his fiancée as a coward is ostracized. As a sign of his branding, these four white feathers send him - then he tries to convince everyone and himself of his true motives in a self-discovery process.
background
The film takes place against the historical background of the so-called Mahdi uprising . In Sudan, which had come under the rule of the Ottoman viceroys ( Khedives ) of Egypt from 1821, the uprising of Muhammad Ahmad , the Mahdi , occurred in the course of the occupation . The new British governor of Sudan Gordon Pasha tried in vain to prevent the Mahdi movement from spreading. On January 26, 1885, the Mahdists captured the capital, Khartoum , killing Gordon Pasha. The Gordon Relief Expedition to the rescue of Gordons under General Wolseley , which provides the background for the 2002 film, reached the city on January 28, 1885, two days after it fell. As a result, the British troops were withdrawn from Sudan except for a few areas. It was not until 1896 that a British-Egyptian expeditionary force under Herbert Kitchener was set on the march, which defeated the Mahdists on September 2, 1898 at the Battle of Omdurman . Unlike the 2002 film, this expedition and the Battle of Omdurman are the focus of AEW Mason's book and the 1955 film.
action
Harry Faversham, Lieutenant in the Royal Cumbrians , a (fictional) regiment in the British Army , seems to have a bright future ahead of him. As the son of a general, career and social rank are mapped out. The handsome and talented soldier is popular with his comrades as well as their superiors. Harry's engagement to Ethne, which Harry's friend Jack Durrance had secretly hoped for, is announced at a ball. Harry's luck seems perfect until the Colonel of the regiment announces the "good news" at a festive banquet that the "Royal Cumbrians" would also enjoy the honor and duty of being allowed to go to war in Sudan. Everyone cheers, but Harry reacts cautiously. Harry had chosen the military career only for the sake of his father and believed that with four years of service he would meet the demands of society. A pacifist at heart , he says goodbye to his astonished Colonel. When Harry reveals himself to his fiancée, she initially gets him wrong and believes that he is only afraid of war out of consideration for herself. Therefore, she explains that she will wait for him, he may calmly move to Sudan. When he explains his true motives to her, she turns away from him - as does his father, who replies that he does not know him.
Harry decides to travel to Sudan on his own to protect his friends and prove to them that he is not a coward. In Sudan, his friends are already experiencing the unfamiliar guerrilla fight against a sniper in the kasbah gorges of a Sudanese city. After his arrival Harry tries to get inland to the base of his comrades with the caravan of the brutal Frenchman Gustave. Among other things, he earns his living by selling Dinka women as prostitutes to the soldiers. The dealer abuses and humiliates the women who kill the oppressor at night and only spare Harry because he tried to prevent a flogging the day before. Without a guide and with little water, Harry drags himself there until he finally falls off his dromedary and threatens to die of thirst in the desert. But in the figure of the gigantic colored Abou Fatmas (something like "Father of Fate") he is saved. The fatalist, a former spy of the British troops under General William Hicks , who were crushed in the Battle of Sheican , declares himself responsible for Harry's well-being, as fate has led him on his way.
Thanks to Abou's help, Harry gets into the service of his comrades' base as a porter. Jack stays in England against his will to do propaganda for the war in Africa as a war hero. Inevitably, he meets with Ethne there too. Since Harry is considered missing, the two approach. Meanwhile, Abou and Harry notice that scouts of the Mahdi are also among the porters of the company. When they sneak away in the course of a light sandstorm, both follow the group with camels and discover that the nearest major British base has already been taken by the enemy and the crew has been slaughtered. The Mahdi's men are now wearing the red skirts that they took from the corpses, so that the trap is obvious. Harry is forced into the service of the Mahdis, but he can still send Abou a message to the Royal Cumbrians to warn them of the ambush . The deluded British officers do not believe the African, despite his assurances, and have him arrested as a deserter and flogged.
A smaller squad of enemy cavalry approaches the regiment and is shot down without realizing that this mock attack is only intended to encircle them in the plain. In the battle that followed, the odds were too great. Just as the British think they have breathed, they think they see a cavalry failure at the nearby base - however, it is only the Mahdi men in disguise that Harry has mingled with. The British notice the mistake too late and try to withdraw. In the battle of retreat, Castleton is killed by his own bullets, Trench is captured and Jack is blinded when his rifle explodes. Harry can barely save the blind man who does not recognize him. Harry reads his ex-fiancée's letters more randomly and takes the friend to the nearest hospital . There he reveals his identity to Willoughby in order to devote himself to the rescue of Trench, who is said to be incarcerated in the notorious prison of Omdurman.
Weeks later, Willoughby visits the reasonably restored Jack at the Ethnes estate, where it becomes apparent that he has now taken Harry's place with the young woman. Willoughby tells Durrance about his encounter - but Ethne hides the appearance of her former fiancé. At the same time, Harry was provocatively delivered to prison, where the claustrophobic conditions prevail at night , which Kapur thought up. Hundreds of men are crowded in circles there without finding peace. Anyone who comes to a standstill will be trampled to death. Trench and Harry only find a short break at the edge on some wall heels. Due to the quarry and the insufficient nutrition, the friends are on the verge of collapse when Abou, as a saving angel, brings them food and a poison that is supposed to sink them into a death-like sleep in order to enable them to escape from the mass grave. The trick almost seems to work, but the head of the camp becomes suspicious and goes after them with a few men. The fugitives split up, Abou runs up a sand dune with Trench over his shoulder, only to collapse on the summit after several misses by his pursuers. The guardian has followed Harry and seems to be able to kill him with his bare hands in the middle of the dune landscape when Harry finally stabs the physically superior opponent with a sharp bone.
Back in England, Harry meets Jack, who initially welcomes him coolly. But when he realizes through a more accidental touch with Harry's face that this was the "mute" man who had once saved him, and he therefore also knows about the letters from Ethnes, he realizes the true moral strength of Harry's actions. He renounces the young woman, while Harry replies that she has to decide for herself. In the final speech, Jack says that in such a struggle it is no longer about serving your fatherland, but protecting those who stand next to you as a comrade or friend. Finally, a happy ending between Harry and Ethne is indicated.
Anachronisms and film mistakes
One of the historical inaccuracies is that the regiment wears the red uniforms typical of the British, even though it wore a gray costume when deployed in Sudan. The director was aware of this, but chose the red uniform because of the better color contrast.
Even when the military patrol followed a sniper in the old town, one of the soldiers fired several volleys in quick succession. But this would not have been possible in this form with the actual Martini Henry rifle , a single -shot rifle .
In the rugby match that opens the film , the referee only interrupts the game after three serious fouls , although this should have happened after one individual. According to the audio commentary, Kapur wanted to show that this Victorian society, which is extremely concerned with conventions and rules, had already anticipated the struggle and brutality of its imperialism in its sports of all places.
The historically incorrect oversubscription of a British sport is perhaps due to Kapur's Indian origins. In some Indian films, some European sports, even less physical ones, have been extremely differentiated. One example of this is the film Lagaan , in which the local protagonists initially cannot understand the grim seriousness of the game of cricket . Internal mechanisms can only be revealed through the presentation from a different perspective.
Interpretation of the director
“The film is essentially a story about young boys who become men in war, and it shows the transition from boyish naivety to one where doubt and realistic self-reflection are possible. As a filmmaker, I show the England of those years as a place where questions were not allowed - but Sudan is a place where elementary questions have to be asked if one is to survive. Harry Feversham takes on the character with the greatest self-doubt, and I was looking for an actor who, even in defeat, can be dignified and communicate growing wisdom to the audience. And when I finally tested Heath Ledger, I was surprised at the depth of his soul he was able to show. "
criticism
The American newspaper San Francisco Chronicle sees an ambivalence in the film, which is not clear about its attitude to colonialism and heroism. A brilliant epic will be messed up for a muddled script. The German cinema portal MovieMaze sees the motivations of the individual characters convincingly highlighted. Thanks to the good-looking main actors and the grandiose look, the film offers almost two hours of good entertainment. The online edition of the (British) BBC recognized the optical brilliance of the film, but complained about “bloodlessness” ( “the beauty of the battle scenes can't compensate for the bloodlessness elsewhere” ) and summed up: a stiff, mediocre historical film. Shekar Kapur's remake of the 1939 imperialist epic is as unnecessary as it is uninteresting ( "A stilted, so-so period pic, Shekhar Kapur's remake of the 1939 imperialist epic is as unnecessary as it is uninteresting." ). When it was broadcast on TV, the German-language press viewed the film as a “rock-hard self-discovery trip ” : The epic “is not stingy with lush battle scenes and show effects, but the [...] director [...] is far from glorifying British colonialism." The evaluation of 150 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes showed a positive share of 41%
literature
- Alfred Edward Woodley Mason: The Four Feathers. (Original title: The Four Feathers ; German by Thomas Schlück ) Aufbau-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-7466-1924-6 .
- Alfred Edward Woodley Mason: The Four Feathers . Dodo Press, 2008, ISBN 1-4065-8781-8 . (English version)
Web links
- The four springs in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The Four Feathers atRotten Tomatoes(English)
- The Four Feathers at Metacritic (English)
Notes and evidence
- ↑ As early as 1857/58, British troops deployed in India were equipped with earth-brown or khaki-colored uniforms in order to adapt to the climate. The supposedly typical British red was a thing of the past when deployed in the Orient or the tropics. Compare: From the colorful tunic to the dreary field gray .
- ↑ See the following: Lagaan - Once upon a time in India. Once upon a time in India ( Memento of the original from November 25, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . - DVDmaniacs.de, October 17, 2009, accessed September 30, 2011.
- ↑ See also on the anti-colonial motif: Astrid Erll: LAGAAN. Myth update in Bollywood . In: Stephanie Wodianka / Dietmar Rieger (ed.): Mythos updates: transmission and generation potentials of an old form of memory . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2006, p. 48ff.
- ↑ www.filmkreis.tu-darmstadt.de ( Memento of the original from March 6, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . To explain: In Lagaan it is emphasized that the villagers completely miss the grim seriousness of the game when they hurry to the field as a delegation of the supplicants. They make fun of it, laugh because it reminds them of a familiar children's game (similar to our dodgeball ) and they don't expect this seriousness in adults. Thereupon not only the captain feels provoked, confronts her and as a result the bet / the competition starts. Complete self-surrender to the point of brutality initially appears alien to the Indians in this film - and because Lagaan is deeply pacifist inside and also all castes , strata and religions in the common peaceful defense of the village or province against the colonial aggressor in the personification of the blinded captain unite, they represent the counter-model to British imperialism. And Kapur was also concerned with this contrast (see audio commentary on the scene), who was accused of having made an anti- British film for good reason in the British rainbow press . This is not about learning certain sports by special ethnic groups, but about understanding them in a sociocultural context.
- ^ San Francisco Chronicle
- ↑ moviemaze
- ↑ bbc.co.uk - Movie review
- ↑ TV feature film 17/2006, p. 182.
- ↑ Review summary on Rottentomatoes (Eng.)
