Hunting for adventure in 'The Ghost and the Darkness'

Hunting for adventure in 'The Ghost and the Darkness'

By Laksmi Pamuntjak-Djohan

JAKARTA (JP): If you think that The Ghost and the Darkness
sounds like one of your typical Joseph Conrad titles, you may not
be far off the mark. Instead of taking place in some exotic
Malayan locale, it tells the story of the "most famous African
adventure" as seen from the eyes of yet another sterling specimen
of the British Empire, Lt. Col. John Patterson.

The Ghost and the Darkness takes place during the waning years
of the 19th century, when England, France and Germany are racing
to complete the first railroad to facilitate the ivory trade.
Patterson (Val Kilmer), a "brilliant engineer" and a "fine
English gentleman" of Irish descent, is given five months by
railroad magnate-cum-colonialist par excellence John Beaumont
(Tom Wilkinson) to build a bridge over the Tsavo river. No
problem so far.

Arriving in Uganda, Patterson churns out bookish facts about
African flora and fauna while drinking in the beauty of the
wilderness for the first time. The team's missionary, Angus
Starling (Brian McCardie), is suitably impressed. When asked how
long he's been in Africa, Patterson replies cockily, "Less than
24 hours." And you really don't expect any less qualified person
to shoulder the white man's burden in a place as ominous as
Africa, right?

But, Samuel (John Kani), his native adviser, acquaints him
with reality by telling him that Tsavo is "the worst place on
earth". Not a moment too soon, Patterson's utopian vision of
"bringing worlds together" is shattered by feuding workers,
endorsing the long-held view of Orientals being much given to
superstition, intrigue, suspicion, and confrontation. And, as
usual, this material is pure background. We're told that the
Africans don't get along with the Indians, and the Moslems fight
with the Hindus, but the ramifications of these internal
struggles are left unexplored.

Why? For the simple fact that this tale is meant to showcase
Patterson's other magnificent talent -- hunting. When a lion
kills one of his workers, he hunts and kills it with one shot. He
instantly becomes the hero of the people. But the glory soon
proves temporary, as two almost supernaturally vicious man-eating
lions start stalking his camp, dragging the victims off to their
bone-festooned lair, and killing more than 130 people.

Falling way behind schedule, and confronted by the ire of his
boss whose only concern is his own knighthood, Patterson just
can't resist the profound demands of his own British ego.
Together with legendary hunter Charles Remington (Michael
Douglas), they set out on a hunting spree to eliminate the lions
and show nature who's boss.

With lions being a threatened species, it's hard not to think
that they might have a point -- right or wrong, they're at least
looking out for their own interests. But, naturally, there is an
excuse. The natives believe that these lions -- called "The
Ghost" and "The Darkness" -- are evil spirits. After all, if they
are just lions, then why be righteous about killing them?

Like most of the surviving accounts of white men in the dark
and mysterious Orient, The Ghost and the Darkness is replete with
Orientalist cliches: heat, dust, intense energy, the promise of
terror, mystical force, and a proliferation of bare-chested
African blacks and turbaned Hindus and Moslems as a sideshow. It
also perpetuates the worst depiction of the Masai, a warrior
tribe whose ethnographic richness has so inspired modern
anthropology. Here we have an Orientalist discourse which, for
all intents and purposes, only makes sense as an attempt to
remind us of past western glories.

It sure explains all that soppy opening stuff about it being a
true story. Sure, it is nice to know that yet another tale of a
white man saving Africa from itself really did take place. But
that knowledge casts a pall of inevitability over the whole
affair: Had the lions won, you'd have heard of them before.

Yet there is something oddly satisfying about this movie.
Basically, it is a kind of suspense film you just don't see very
often. A force of nature in its own element can be a truly
frightening thing, and why it succeeds where Twister doesn't is
that director Stephen Hopkins -- whose screen credits include
Predator 2 and Nightmare on Elm Street 5 -- knows exactly what
works in this kind of film. Although he could have done better
with the animatronics, the lions' formidability is sensed
throughout. And whenever they are on the prowl, you'll find
yourself scooting to the edge of your seat.

Granted, there is a tremendous primal appeal to the battle
between man and beast, enhanced in no small measure by Vilmos
Zsigmond's stunning cinematography. When a worker is dragged from
the tent in a fast blur, the scene sends goose bumps up your arm.
Best of all is the blowing fields of bramble where evil lurks --
somewhere.

Credits should also go to the cast, whose well-defined
characters owe a great deal to two-time Oscar winning
screenwriter William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
and All the President's Men). Beaumont, characterized here as the
world's worst racist and manager, is portrayed with sufficient
menace by Tom Wilkinson. John Kani's Samuel is exceptionally
funny, especially when exchanging verbal ripostes with Brian
McCardie's Starling, who is an irrepressible twit with "death"
stamped all over his face. Om Puri, a veteran of Satyajit Ray's
films, is intense as Abdullah, the leader of the Moslems, and
Henry Cele is simply glorious as Mahina, the charismatic leader
of the black.

But the film belongs to Kilmer. Though he bounces in and out
of what is supposed to be an Irish accent, he makes a sympathetic
and convincing hero. He is on screen in nearly every scene, and
delivers a steady, subtle performance that does much to redeem
himself from his embarrassingly self-indulgent performance in The
Island of Dr. Moreau.

Less successful is Douglas. Playing a renegade type with a
tortured past, his one moment of introspection is supposed to
define his entire personality. But, in effect, he does little
beyond recycling his scraggly Jack Colton character from the
Romancing the Stone series. The only hitch is that he was younger
and funnier then.

In the end, you can't help but feel that the lions are not
"The Ghost" and "The Darkness" they are made out to be, but
intelligent creatures viewing the railroad project as
representative of white people's exploitation of the continent.
They are merely articulating these feelings by eating as many of
the builders as they can.

But, of course, history has its own ways, and all the white
folks merrily go back to colonizing Africa. Don't we all love
happy endings?