Farewell To The King [1989] [DVD]

Farewell to the King should have been John Milius' masterpiece. Harking back to Joseph Conrad and the days of high adventure so beloved of the writer-director, this WW2 tale of a deserter who becomes a king in Borneo only to lose everything fighting the Japanese and betrayed by the Allies, it seemed made to measure for his brand of bravado and myth making. Even had Milius not ill-advisedly taken Spielberg's advice to trim half an hour from his original cut and the film not been released in two slightly different cuts on either side of the Atlantic, Farewell would almost certainly still have been an awkward and under-achieving film so problematic are many aspects: yet for all its many faults, there's enough there that IS unique to keep on drawing me back time and again. Part old-fashioned adventure, part folie de grandeur, all box-office disaster, it's a mess, but it's an intriguing one that's hard to dislike despite its many flaws, and Basil Poledouris' remarkable score is a thing of wonder.

The performances are variable: Nigel Havers is fine as the narrator who knows that one day he'll have to betray the King, but in a part that really calls for a Steve McQueen or a Russell Crowe, Nick Nolte has a few too many eccentric moments and isn't always able to make Milius' dialog sound as good as it reads (a common problem in many of his scripts). Frank McRae, Marius Weyers and Milius' old surfing buddy Gerry Lopez offer good support, but there's a truly terrible but mercifully brief performance from the future Mrs Milius, Elan Oberon. The film feels somewhat cramped at times due to Milius' decision not to shoot in Scope (he dislikes 2.35:1 despite doing his most visually impressive work in the ratio), although cinematographer Dean Semler pulls off an impressive sequence where a night time ambush goes horribly wrong due to a sudden shift in the weather.

It would have been interesting to see what author Pierre Schoendoerffer would have made of it had he been able to direct it himself. Like Milius an unashamed admirer of Joseph Conrad (the story is basically a WW2 reworking of Lord Jim), the French writer-director's own films, particularly the haunting Le Crabe Tambour, hint at a more melancholy, less gung-ho attack on the material. But Milius' film has enough going for it to make it worth a look.

The US cut recently released on Region 1 DVD by MGM/UA is different in quite a few ways to the European version, released in the UK by Prism. For a start, it's shorter, although it has some additional footage: the battle montage as the Japanese retreat is much longer (the entire battle at the river is cut from the European versions), while there's a scene of James Fox reminiscing about a girl he knew in India that is missing from the European cut, as well as a few additional lines of dialogue in some scenes. However, there is a huge and fairly important scene cut from near the end of the picture, where Fairbourne (Havers) visits the Japanese general as he has his last meal before his execution: it's not an entirely successful scene, but the film works better with it than without. There's also a big structural difference, with the US cut showing Learoyd deserting and watching his companions being executed as a pretitle sequence - this footage is in the European cut, but much more comfortably included much later when Learoyd is telling the story of how he became king. Also, the opening quote has been dropped and replaced with title cards specifying the date and location, while the closing narration is longer. On the whole, aside from the missing battle montage footage, the European version plays better.

It was too much to hope for deleted scenes or even Milius' original two-and-a-half hour cut of the film on either the PAL or the NTSC disc, but they could have at least included the trailer - but unfortunately both PAL and NTSC versions are completely extras free. The NTSC version contains a slightly dark 1.85:1 transfer of the US version, while the R2 PAL disc is an acceptable fullframe transfer of the European cut of the film that is sporadically grainy and does have a very noticeable sound drop-out at one point, as well as missing the translation subtitles for a three or four lines of dialogue that are on the US disc.

I love that old fashioned "Gunga Din" sense of adventure that John Milius brings to his films. He converted me a long time ago when I watched Sean Connery as the most unlikely Arab ever, in his wonderfully entertaining high adventure "The Wind and the Lion". I even periodically watch his paen to sixties surfing "Big Wednesday", where he directed with those big rose tinted spectacles. His screenplays are nearly always literate, and he is a larger than life character who knows cinema inside out. Romance, adventure and imagination he has in abundance which he always tries to bring to the party wearing his heart on his sleeve. The type who as Walt Whitman once said 'contains multitudes'. All this makes him hard to dislike for someone who even today will watch "Lives of a Bengal Lancer". He is a lover of Kipling and Conrad who both influence the film heavily. He even gives both authors an honourable mention in despatches in the film. He brings many of these talents to bear in this rather neglected film, which although not perfect is an entertaining enough yarn.

The story has Nigel Havers parachuting into Borneo towards the end of World War Two, in an attempt to arm the natives and put up resistence against the Japanese occupiers. He finds Nick Nolte an American deserter living amongst a remote tribe and accepted as their king. He tells a story similar to the one told in Kipling's "The Man Who Would be King". Nolte aside from being a dead ringer for Tarzan, I'm thinking of Christopher Lambert here folks, also bears close similarity to Brando's Colonel Kurz in "Apocalypse Now", a film scripted by Milius who adapted Joseph Conrad's short story "Heart of Darkness". Nolte has the tribes interests at heart and wants to avoid the war, which unfortunately comes knocking on their door. The film contains some sobering thoughts on how war can reduce a Japanese soldier who has no rice left to the basest human level. Havers British Officer is also forced to make difficult decisions. The friendship between Nolte and Havers is believable and well constructed. The ending is more optomistic than I expected and is in the best traditions of high adventure.

The film was realistically shot in Sarawak, which is on the same landmass as Borneo. Many of the cast used were local Dayak's it seems from reading the credits. The great surfer Gerry Lopez was better cast as, surprise surprise a surfer in "Big Wednesday", but perhaps not as one of the locals despite Hawaiian ancestry. Havers himself looks a bit on the delicate side to be a roughty toughty jungle fighter, but then you never can tell with these public school lads you know old boy. He never really convinced me as a great athlete in "Chariots of Fire" for that matter! The film although slightly muddled at times had some lovely moments. On one occasion Nolte states he had been a communist. Havers responds "How can a communist be a king", to which Nolte answers "Only a communist could think of that". The film has a suitably rousing score by long time Milius collaborator Basil Poledouris, and was based on Pierre Schoedoerffer's 1969 novel "L'Adieu au Roi". No need to translate that one! The film bombed badly at the box office and was immediately forgotten as failures so often are. Hopefully this latest release will give it a new lease of life. It certainly doesn't deserve film oblivion. This was good old school entertainment that I thooroughly enjoyed. A comfortable four stars.

This film has got to be one of the best from Nick Nolte, a brilliant performance from Nigel Havers and an unusual story line help make it great film worth watching