A Grand, Ferocious Folly

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON Directed by Bob Rafelson

Screenplay by William Harrison and Bob Rafelson

Once upon a time, actors like Spencer Tracy (in Stanley and Livingstone) strode off to explore Africa with their pith helmets set squarely on their brows, their bush jackets neatly pressed and a chorus bawling Onward, Christian Soldiers on the sound track.

In Mountains of the Moon, John Hanning Speke (Iain Glen) is just a few days out on his first trek into the wilderness when he gets a spear through his cheek, and a messy, bloody business it is. Before the movie ends, his partner, the celebrated Richard Burton (Patrick Bergin), suffers a vividly portrayed case of cellulitis as well as a degrading imprisonment by a tribe not thrilled at being discovered by civilization. The movie strongly hints at a homosexual bond between the two men -- at least until they fall into an unseemly squabble over who actually discovered the source of the Nile -- but also provides an unusual erotic scene between Burton and his fiancee. It is perhaps superfluous to add that neither antihero achieves a heroic end.

Though Bob Rafelson's film has epic scope, its attitudes are anything but those of the conventional epic. Yet somehow it conveys, as few movies ever have, the miserable realities that underlay the 19th century's heroic age of exploration. Since it bravely takes up a subject remote from the interests of most of the modern audience, the film itself has about it the air of a grand, ferocious folly. Precisely because it is a high-risk venture in a low-risk movie climate, it deserves one's startled gratitude.