Noble Ruin

By R.S.

UNDER THE VOLCANO Directed by John Huston Screenplay by Guy Gallo

The charitable rationale for Geoffrey Firmin's alcoholism is that it constitutes a heroic refusal. Rather than embrace the political, social and religious delusions that draw the masses toward self-destruction, he prefers the company of his private demons. The less kindly reading of Geoffrey's character is that he is yet another example of a familiar type: a pretentious and self-pitying drunk.

Approaching the screen adaptation of Malcolm Lowry's complex novel, one anticipated a worst-case scenario in every sense of the word. The last gloomily adventurous 24 hours of the onetime British consul in Cuernavaca, which begin on the Mexican Day of the Dead (and on the eve of World War II as well), are an invitation to the portentous. But for once the simplifying narrative imperatives of the screen and the imperatives of the talent assembled for the effort) have served a difficult book well. In recounting what is either an ascent to Calvary or a descent into hell Screenwriter Guy Gallo has carved a clear path through the tangled subtropic that is Lowry's imaginative world.

In his last hours Geoffrey's business is to reject finally, definitively, all redemptive possibilities: love (represented by the return of his wife Yvonne); ideological commitment (represented by his hall brother Hugh, who was Yvonne's lover); even such mild anodynes as friendship and nonalcoholic amusement. His fate is to touch bottom, literally in a den of thieves, and he is in haste to find it. The intelligence of Gallo's work lies in his recognition that the symbolic values of Under the Volcano's major figures, incidents and landscape are intrinsic and easy to catch. They need no forcing up.

Wise old John Huston knows that too.

His is now a classic American style of moviemaking, unselfconscious and objective: he trusts the tale, not the teller. And he trusts his actors as well. As Geoffrey, Albert Finney staggers toward his doom on feet unsteadied not so much by booze as by the weight of the cross he bears, a compound of tormented memory and suffering intelligence. There is in his presence a nobility that elicits compassion along with admiration for the actor's work. Jacqueine Bisset and Anthony Andrews tread similarly delicate lines as Yvonne and Hugh, trying to cling to their dreams despite the rude, awakening noises of Geoffrey's self-destruction. With Finney, they slowly draw the viewer across time and distance into an unlikely involvement with highly unlikely people. Some of the rich allusiveness of Lowry's prose may lave been lost in the process, but much has been gained in the way of clear meaning and emotional immediacy.

--R.S.