Overburdened Island

By Mark Goodman

The historical film as a metaphor for contemporary ills has become an overworked convenience. The Great White Hope failed because it tried to use the tragic plight of Heavyweight Jack Johnson to illustrate the ugliness of today's racial strife. In its bloody account of an 1864 massacre of a Cheyenne tribe, Soldier Blue announced in labored fashion that the U.S. military is more barbaric than it cares to admit. But whatever their weaknesses, both films were at least rooted in historical truth. Burn!, by the usually brilliant Italian Director Gillo Pontecorvo (The Battle of Algiers), lacks even that validity. Instead, it is a much-too-convenient contrivance for the director's comments on Viet Nam and racial agony.

The setting is the fictitious Lesser Antillean island of Queimada (Portuguese for "burn") in the 1830s. Sir William Walker (Marlon Brando) is an adventurer employed by the British Admiralty to foment a revolution in the Portuguese colony. Walker realizes that the island's blacks are too downtrodden to grasp political rebellion, so he invites them to participate in something they can appreciate: a bank robbery. He baits a strapping porter named Jose Dolores (Evaristo Marquez) to anger, then decides he is the man to lead the black bandits. With Machiavellian guile he hides the bandits in a jungle village, reveals their location to the Portuguese military, then watches with smug satisfaction as self-preservation grows into open rebellion. The Portuguese are thrown out, Dolores' army is persuaded to lay down its arms in favor of a white-colonist government, and Walker is off to more devilry. Lest anyone miss the point, Walker tells Dolores: "I don't suppose you've ever heard of the place where I'm going. It's called Indochina."

Hedged Bet. To round out the metaphor Walker is hired ten years later by the British sugar company that controls the island. His job: destroy the guerrilla leader he has created. At the end, of course, Dolores is martyred and Walker is destroyed.

After the debacle of Mutiny on the Bounty, Brando should have known enough to stay away from tropical adventurism and English accents. He shows vestiges of genius, but his artistry is subordinated to Pontecorvo's ambition. The earnest director further hedged his bet by substituting full-color flora for the grainy reality that made Battle of Algiers such a masterpiece. But he partially redeems himself with a typical Pontecorvian touch, transforming Evaristo Marquez, an illiterate cane cutter, into an astonishingly effective actor. The growth of Marquez as a leader, his tortuous grappling with the idea of freedom, are poignant and wholly believable. It is no discredit to Marquez that his raw canebrake emotions have been exploited for superficial political diatribe.

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