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White
Squall
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It is a sad week in cinema when a director once as outstanding as Ridley Scott (Blade Runner, 1982) makes a film as appalling as White Squall. This one is a rarity among truly awful movies: not only is it painful and corny to watch, but its slightly enigmatic content lingers in the unconscious like a bad, unshakeable dream. There are at least three levels to White Squall. On the first, surface level, it is a boys' own adventure with a twist. Sheldon (Jeff Bridges, looking fiercely dazed for the whole film) runs an Ocean Academy. He takes a group of boys out to sea on his magnificent boat and – through hard labour, team spirit and compulsory sing-alongs – turns them into men. They are of course a motley crew of teens – variously cowardly, rebellious, indifferent and sociopathic. As in Dead Poets Society (1989) the adult captain, with his mixture of inspirational guff and serene detachment, galvanises and transforms these lost kids. But one can eventually discern the influence of another Peter Weir film, Gallipoli (1981), on this plot. For, one day far out at sea, the boat meets a fearsome white squall. There are miscalculations, errors of judgement, fatalities – and even a moment or two of exciting filmmaking. But what was formerly a noble journey for boys and men now becomes an ignoble court hearing. At this point, the film becomes an unbearably maudlin hymn to male failure and 'lost glory'. On top of this story, Scott and writer Todd Robinson superimpose an extremely uncritical reading of that bible of the Men's Movement, Robert Bly's Iron John. Terrible scenes of the boys going native – and coming to appreciate what they call the "burden of fathers and of men" – alternate with disgracefully misogynistic vignettes concerning nameless girls who lay down their naked bodies for the comfort of these young warriors. And the horror, the horror is not over. Slowly, a third level of this film reveals its shameful, sorry face. It is set in 1960 – thus allowing yet another indulgence of America's supposed loss of innocence in this period. A fleet of Cubans appear at sea, to remind us of the Bay of Pigs crisis shortly to follow in history. But they are not nice Cubans – they are portrayed as ugly and alien. So White Squall ends up as a racist and even imperialist tract – full of sick nostalgia for a mythical time when America could claim its territory unhindered. As the final credits of White Squall rolled – complete with a thinly veiled apologia for America's involvement in the Vietnam War – I had to grip my stomach and steady my spinning head. This was the most reactionary, pernicious Big Movie since Forrest Gump (1994). And what makes the matter worse is that Ridley Scott delivers this poisonous bouquet to us with absolutely no élan, and no cunning. MORE Scott: Black Hawk Down, Kingdom of Heaven, Thelma and Louise © Adrian Martin April 1996 |
