John Parker August 7: Walker (1987)

I enjoyed the film tremendously for both its cinematographic and literary merit. I thought the acting was excellent, as were the music and décor. In fact, as I learned later, Alex Cox filmed this in Nicaragua and during a time of civil strife with Sandinistas battling Contras and Ronald Reagan pleading for America to help the “brave Freedom Fighters.” Yaz mentions that this is an American-help-goes-bad story and calls Walker a “cruel dictator” who believes that because of God’s design, “victory is with us.” My interest in the film, however, is really more for its literary reference, as I will try to convince later on. I may be going out on a limb here, but not too far I hope. I’d love to develop this into my final project for Jon.

I see this film as Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899). The helicopter that arrives with American soldiers emphasizes a connection to the film Apocalypse Now (1979). The modern magazines and cars that we see previously prepare us for this highly dramatic and over-the-top incursion near the end. In Heart of Darkness, Kurtz, an English ivory trader named Mr. Kurtz wreaks havoc with the local population in the jungles of British colonial Africa. Conrad’s denunciation of colonialism is replayed later when Marlon Brandon plays Colonel Kurtz in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now dealing with the Vietnam War. One of his most famous lines is “the horror, the horror,” right out of Conrad. Aex Cox’s William Walker is yet another mercenary with flexible ideals who Nayid says “takes power by force and changes the rules of engagement.” Walker and his men, in an attempt to create a “more civilized nation,” re-establish slavery and are overtly contempt of the local Indigenous population.

Conrad, through the narrator of Heart of Darkness, attacks colonialism and its supposed civilizing plan. He even equates civilized people with the savages, the city of London with the isolated wilds of Africa, the intentions of colonialism with the destruction of people native to the land. Mr. Kurtz says: “Exterminate all the brutes.” He leaves traces of desolation everywhere he has been and eventually becomes an embarrassing problem to the powers that be; they eventually abandon him and even want him dead. Crazy Walker, hungry for power, abuses the locals and is constantly reviewing his political and moral agendas. Like Fred Dobbs in Treasure of the Sierra Madre, he goes crazy in an exotic land that abounds with riches for his taking. He eventually loses everything. He is abandoned by the society he tried to establish and by those who initially sponsored his mission that became his quest for self-aggrandizement. Like “Wrath of God,” as Don Lope de Aguirre called himself, like Mr. Kurtz and later Colonel Kurtz, he cannot contain the havoc that he has caused.

Los acontecimientos, dicen los historiadores, se estudian en su duración, teniendo en mente los procesos diacrónicos que los nutren, y que configuran continuidades y rupturas en el tiempo de las sociedades. El pasado, bajo esta mirada, no se percibe como un lugar anquilosado, oxidado en el recuerdo, sino como un espacio que vale la pena visitar pues nos revela las herencias de ese tiempo anterior que permanecen en el presente, así como las formas que se perdieron o que cambiaron con el paso de los años. El presente, a su vez, se entiende como un lugar desde el cual podemos actuar, bien sea para producir un cambio en las mentalidades y de esta manera configurar un futuro distinto al que se vive, o para buscar las permanencias de modelos en uso que nos lleven a un mañana predecible. Pasado, presente y futuro interactúan entre sí, bajo esta mirada dinámica de los contextos históricos, obligándonos constantemente a reinterpretar los hechos y a revisitar los acontecimientos.

Este manejo dinámico del tiempo, en mi opinión, está en el corazón de la película Walker¸ dirigida por Alex Cox. El director visita el pasado con el fin de recrear la forma en la que William Walker llegó a ocupar la presidencia de Nicaragua, entre 1856 y 1857, detallando algunos rasgos del carácter de este individuo, que muere fusilado en Honduras en 1860. Lo interesante, aquí, es la forma como Cox encara ese pasado que desea narrar. No es esta la típica epopeya histórica, en la que destaca la fidelidad de la imagen con respecto al tiempo narrado. Cox deliberadamente no quiere ser fiel a la cronología, y puebla su historia de anacronismos, que escandalizarían a un historiador de vieja escuela. No estamos ante una historia lineal, en donde el pasado y el presente se mantengan separados e inalterados; poco a poco, sobretodo en la segunda parte del film, empiezan a introducirse en la trama elementos o artículos propios del presente de la filmación: los años 80 del siglo XX ¿Por qué lo hace? “By populating the world of the 1850s with computers, television journalists, cigarette machines, Coca-Cola bottles and MercedesBenz sedans, the film”, dice Tony Shaw, “consciously frustrates audience expectations about the historical film genre”.

El momento de mayor paroxismo atemporal, en donde se terminan de quebrar los parámetros de estas “películas históricas”, llega al final: un convoy de soldados americanos aparece en escena, llevándose a los ciudadanos de ese país en un helicóptero con el fin de salvarlos de la contienda bélica que se apodera de Nicaragua. En clara referencia a la lucha entre Contras (quienes fueron subvencionados por la administración Reagan) y Sandinistas, el pasado se funde con el presente en ese momento clave. Walker permanece, muere fusilado, y al final la película adopta las formas de un documental, mostrando a los civiles muertos en la confrontación de los años 80. Esta es una historia real, se ha leído al principio del filme; los muertos del final también son reales, según sabemos. Y en medio está la historia que deliberadamente quiere ser anacrónica. La película liga el pasado con el presente, a través de la figura de Walker, demostrando las enormes similitudes entre la mirada sobre Nicaragua que se dio en 1850, y la que se da 135 años después.

En efecto: la percepción de los Estados Unidos sobre Nicaragua, en particular, y sobre Latinoamérica, en general, parece que no cambió mucho en este período de tiempo. Shaw dice que la película “tells viewers that the doctrine of Manifest Destiny remains an axiom of modern-day US foreign policy”. Cox, recordemos, se preguntaba por su presente, cuando filmó la película. Preguntémonos ahora por nuestro presente, el año 2017, que se entiende aquí como el futuro de Cox ¿Se perciben continuidades o rupturas? Si nos guiamos por algunas de las promesas que llevaron a Donald Trump a la presidencia, parecería que hablamos más de permanencias que de cambios: “We’re going to make great trade deals. We’re going to rebuild our military. It’s going to be so big, so strong, so powerful. Nobody is going to mess with us, believe me, nobody… I would bomb the s–t out of them. We’re going to make America great again”. Como Walker, Trump le habla a individuos que aún creen en el Excepcionalismo Norteamericano, lo cual aparentemente legitima las intervenciones internacionales convirtiéndolas en una especie de Guerra Justa. Una nación fuerte y poderosa, que se debe imponer de cualquier modo.

Walker, en este sentido, se presenta como una película actual para nosotros, y sus críticas parecen muy atinadas en el contexto global contemporáneo. El poder subversivo de jugar con los anacronismos en varias de sus escenas, consolidan al filme como parte de un proceso que todavía no termina.

I was seriously surprised when the first scene that appeared on the screen was “this is a real story” because so far we haven’t see any movies related to a real story. I haven’t heard about William Walker before Thursday and, even if I am not 100% sure that the movie portrayed a realistic vision of what really happened, I liked the movie.

The first thing that I noticed is that the movie is teeming with inconsistencies and contradictions: it was surreal seeing an helicopter, or cars or modern guns and lighters during the late 1850s. But as the movie progressed, I realized that this was one of the main purposes of it and it was done intentionally.

I found a parallelism between what happened during the colonialism and what the movie showed: when the European colonists arrived in South America, they would argue that it was their right to colonize because they consider indigenous people second-rate just because of different religions, traditions and culture. The same happened here when William Walker was talking with the guy (the one who offered him the job in Nicaragua after Walker’s wife died): that guy said that is was the right of US people to interfere in Nicaragua’s business. I here found the same colonization attitude from Europe.

It really surprised me Doña Yrena’s character: it’s the first powerful woman we got to see on screen. I was impressed with her skills in “commanding” her husband and making him do what she wanted. She was given a great role, as she also talked politics during a dinner with other politic US men. I’d also like to underline how she turned upside down the role between man and woman: in the scene with Walker, two things caught my attention. The first one, when she started talking English and Walker was surprised, she answered “I have talked in many way, but you didn’t hear me” and it just reminded me of Walker’s wife: she also talked and warned Walker, but he didn’t (want to) listen. Also… being a ASL student, I just loved those first scenes between Walker and his wife. The second thing about Walker and Yrena’s sex scene is that she took control: it’s “common” practice that the man, to show off his power, tries to push down the woman for a sex act. In this scene, she did it. She behaved like a man.

I also noticed that nature and music got an important role in this movie, as well as religion; it also made me question about what our society (or the society of the late 1850s) considers as “hero“. The US interfered with Nicaragua’s politics and life, making themselves appear like saviors. But, at the very end, while the sign said “We are sending them a message”, the images were showing death, pain, crying babies and bodies all over the city. What kind of message were the US sending? And, as I believe that this movie can be transported to our times, what message are the US still sending?

Yasaman Rafiei 2017-08-04

The movie is inspired by a true story when a businessman takes advantage of a troubled country to fill his pockets. He plans to overthrow an authoritarian government and replace it with another one to fulfil his interests, using military power and the fanatic Walker.

Walker betrays all principals and his lunatic, psychopathic, and pathetic character is exaggerated throughout the movie. Moreover, the use of car and helicopter (the earliest known helicopter is for 1906) did not match the year in which the story was taking place. Despite all this, the movie neatly depicted the true face and hegemony of Americans in Latin America. To them, Nicaragua was only a means of connecting two oceans. It is sad that the Americans insert the idea of fraternity into the society by telling them that “it is a privilege to be Nicaraguan”; insofar, the Nicaraguans mourned more for the death of their American brothers than their own people. They even blamed themselves for what has happened, “God Bless Americans, … They come to improve our civilization, to develop our country …but we killed them!”. This brotherhood didn’t last long and ended up abusing them in the worst way possible. In the final scene, when Nicaraguans were begging for their survival, they only received bullets as they did not carry any official American documents!

Another important theme of this movie is religion. The abuse of religion for the stability of power is sorrowful. Religion has been abused throughout history by Christians and Muslims, since the medieval ages, and the same trends are still going on around the world such as ISIS, al-Qaeda and even Donald Trump. Walker promoted Christianity and claimed that “God is on our side, victory is with us”. He even believes that God has given him the authority to do whatever he wants. That is why he says “we are here as a guest and we act with a moral dictated by God”. He is so sure and confident about his religiosity that he pushes back the one who is sympathizing with him over his lover’s death and says, “What do you know about God?” In this scene, his hypocrisy becomes obvious when he curses God when he is alone.

The Nicaraguans believed in him as their prophet who has come to rescue them from misery. “You are victorious, you broke cholera, you won.” The Nicaraguans see the image of God in him and he accepts it with open arms, “This is my destiny, I can’t lose”. However, as the story goes on, all these values are taken apart one by one and Walker turns into a political and moral loser. He claims to be a social democrat but finds the solution in slavery and dictatorship. Walker reminds me the Hitler’s words in 1936: “I am not a dictator, I have only simplified democracy”. Walker keeps on abusing the moral dictates of God until he becomes a cruel dictator.

In “Walker”, the main slogan of Americans was “we are here to unify this nation”. This lie had only one purpose to bring people together; however, liberals were their true friends and conservatives were, in fact, their enemies (based on the movie’s definition of liberal and conservative). To Walker, he himself was the Democrat, but he defined democracy as he wanted and ended up building a wall between the two political parties rather than unifying them.

Natives in this movie are shown as welcoming and friendly folks.  In the beginning, they guided Americans to find a path to Nicaragua, but Americans were cruel to them. Americans were cruel to black Americans as well, like the last scene of the movie when the faithful black American soldier was shot in cold blood as a response to his request to the Colonel to join them in the helicopter.

Walker is a smart man with signs of narcissism who is looking for an opportunity to get to power. He had some mental visions and once he reached them, he became a villain who is ready to do whatever it takes to maintain his position and his power. He had the illusion of being a representative of God on earth, who is born to be a winner. He couldn´t accept defeat and be willing to stand and die with the tag of Nicaragua´s president rather than returning to his country as a guilty American citizen. All in all, the idealist fanatic William Walker (Ed Harris), who lead the bloody and barbaric invasion of Nicaragua, under the influence that the United States has a moral right to protect its neighbours from all the oppressions, barely achieved his goal.

I must say, the title of this film is very apt. From the scene where Fielding is talking to his therapist about being repeatedly electrocuted as a child by his heated blanket, to his masquerade across San Marcos and becoming their figurehead, to his fantastical, on and off, yet very dry relationship with Nancy, this film […]

I personally dislike Woody Allen and I find most of his works to be tasteless and bizarre but I have to admit Bananas was not bad and the jokes were quite clever. The way this movie was filmed and made seemed like it was a “bad movie” as what we discussed in the previously class but the characteristics and the way the film was made sort of broke the boundaries of what a “bad” film is.  Although lacking in a coherent storyline, good cinematography and exceptional  acting, the film shined on with its jokes and the clever parodies that made it so entertaining.

The whole film is a satirical view of American foreign policies, general public ignorance, and corruption of Latin American coup d’etats during the 70s. The beginning of the film which the coup of the fictional country San Marcos is broadcasted as if it was a sports event with Howard Cosell commentating the situation gives the bizarre and abstract comedic taste of what the movie is about. The journey of Fielding Mellish and his quest to San Marcos in hopes of winning the love of Nancy ends up with Fielding in all sorts of hilarious and unrealistic situations. I think the character of Fielding Mellish is a personification and a reflection of the stereotypical American loser who is a failure in life and is blinded by sexual lust and soul-searching. In a way I can see the purpose of the film could have been to target towards young audiences who were in a similar situation as the character and somewhat gave them hope and laughter.

In regards to the theme of American involvement in Latin America and the coups, I wasn’t sure if the film was trying to raise the issue and criticize something or just making a satirical parody out it. In the scene where the rebels manage to take back San Marcos and overthrow the military dictatorship it shows the rebel leader himself goes insane and corrupt like the previous leader which shows that the power and corruption in San Marcos (or other Latin American nations) is a cycle that cannot be broken. The scene where Fielding is also on trial for crimes and the testimony of various people could also be a satire of the American society as a whole. I admit I am not completely sure what message was, whether it was a satire on the ignorance of society or if the whole thing was just made-up comedy based on current world events at that time.

I enjoyed the film, mindless and senseless as it was, it gave me a good laugh and surprised me on how talented Woody Allen is.

In class yesterday, when we were discussing what a bad movie was, I said that movies which fail to meet the basics of cinematography such as camera shots that don’t make sense or films without coherent plots are bad movies. At the same time, however, I said that I like when film tries to push boundaries and re-invent the styles we become used to. When it fails in doing this though, a bad movie is the result. And what I said really did not make a lot of sense, I was thinking far too literally. 

Bananas was an immediate response that destroyed my previous point about what makes for a bad film. If there is someone who can break all of the rules of film, lack coherence, choreograph awkward shots while making the viewer disgusted, engaged, and smile all at the same it would be young Woody Allen. But he does it in a way that works extremely well.

In fact, this was the first Woody Allen film I have ever seen. From what I have heard from my parents and grandparents, he is strange, controversial and funny. This one, unlike a timid Elvis at the top of the high dive, was hilarious. Bananas stands in sharp contrast to our previous film in terms of its protagonist and how it interacts with Latin America. The critique of the media as well as the overly transparent political process was ridiculous in a good way. I don’t like slapstick humor that much. However, the drawn out, physically uncomfortable shots such as when Neville and his girlfriend are in bed I found very funny.  While watching Fun in Acapulco, I could not decide if I liked Mike Windgren. Interesting, I felt similar towards Fielding Mellish. He is easy to laugh at but hard to like.

What the film was trying to say about American involvement in Latin America, I am not entirely sure. There was a large cultural response to US intervention in the region, Cuba specifically during the 1960’s. It seems to me that Allen thought it would be fun if he joked about it. We are left with a clever critique that makes all of the American characters in the film look stupid no matter what side they are on. Because of the transparency of the critique, of the films we have watched, this film provides the strongest argument against the US state intervention as well as against the ignorance of American society towards these globalsituations.

Bananas opens with a very satirical tone. The first scene gives a perfect example of satire with the American reporter who introduces the movie by reporting from San Marco’s, “a Latin American country” as he says. He is reporting a political broadcast for “wide public sports” which I thought to be rather comical. His descriptions of the occurring assassination and coup d’etat that is about to occur in this mythical Latin American country sound exciting, the reporter really does sound like he is sports anchor (which we also see at the end of the film). Bananas, to me, was a satire towards politics but also Mellish’s sex life.

Allen’s character, Fielding Mellish works as a product tester. We are introduced to him in the second scene where he is testing out the executizer, a machine that helps executive Americans get their daily exercise because there simply isn’t enough hours in the day. While he is testing out this product we can see that he is having a difficult time. Once he is in a change room with his co-workers he vents out to them that he is unhappy and that isn’t the job for him. His co-workers seem to not care or perhaps be irritated with him telling him that they have to hear this every day.

In the next scene, Mellish is in a magazine store. The camera focuses on sex magazines and Mellish is looking at them but he tried to be discreet because there is a lot of people around. An older woman seems to be staring at him and he becomes embarrassed and pretends to buy other magazines listing the names. When he reaches for one of the sex magazines he says “I’ll put this in there too”, believing that no one knows until the cashier yells out “How much is this ORGASM?!”. Mellish (or Allen) tries to find a reasonable explanation as to why he is purchasing this magazine by telling the people in the store that he is “doing a sociological study on perversion about advanced child molesting”. I found this to be quite interesting for the fact that the very little I know about Woody Allen is that there has been controversy about him having sexually abused his ex-wife’s daughter in the past.

Later on in the film, we meet Nancy, a philosophy student who knocks on Mellish’s door asking him to sign a petition to stop the US government in helping the San Marcos dictatorship but instead help fund the rebels. Nancy becomes Mellish’s love interest very quickly which eventually ends even faster. Before the break-up scene we see Mellish in a therapy session where he is explaining his sexual frustrations as a boy and problems he had with his parents. I’m not entirely sure why this was added into the film but it continues with a reoccuring theme of Mellish (or Allen’s) issues with his sex life. When Nancy breaks up with Mellish she tells him that she thinks it’s best that they no longer see each other because she feels that “something is missing”. Mellish doesn’t understand why she would do such a thing and starts listing attributes that perhaps might make her feel the need to end things. Although everything he is saying isn’t the reason Nancy ends up telling him that he is immature emotionally, sexually, and intellectually. For this reason Mellish leaves the US and goes to San Marco’s, where he ends up becoming the president of the country. Now, as a disguised president he meets Nancy again where she falls for him. They both sleep together and he afterwards reveals his true self where Nancy says yet again “I knew something was missing”.

The last scene where Mellish and Nancy get married is rather strange. Their marriage is consummated by having intercourse infront of an audience and is covered by the news reporters at the beginning of the film. Again, the reporter is announcing as if it were a sports broadcast. He later interviews the couple and asks how things went. Nancy replies with saying it was quick and that Mellish was out of shape and that it could have been better. This shows the reoccuring theme of Mellish’s sexual incompetence or frustrations. Which I think could be actual perceptions that Allen has with himself. Overall, I thought that Bananas was very rare but I also enjoyed it for that fact. Another reason that one of my favorite films is a Woody Allen film so I just enjoy seeing his work.