Having read that this unusual James Ivory-Ismail Merchant production was a pseudo-Bunuelian concoction, I thought I’d acquire it for my long-planned Luis Bunuel tribute on the 25th anniversary of his death (which occurred on 29th July 1983). Now that I’ve watched it, apart from the obvious thematic allusions to ROBINSON CRUSOE (1952), I’d say that it’s also a half-baked inversion of THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL (1962) which, apart from the occasional amusing passage, fails to entertain or enlighten the viewer, much less do justice to its intriguing subject matter.
For being such a radical stylistic departure for them (even at that early a stage in their careers) and the film’s own satirical intent, it might not be as surprising to learn that Merchant-Ivory here engaged two young writers from the “National Lampoon” school – George Swift Trow and Michael O’Donoghue (later also of “Saturday Night Live”) – to pen the script, not to mention the title track! The latter plays over an animated dramatis personae which introduces us to an archetypal assortment of upper-class citizens complete with clichéd monikers typical of Silent cinema (a bully, a capitalist, a decadent, the limping man, etc.). After this lengthy prelude, a curiously-drawn intertitle “The Mud People” plunges us in a black-and-white world of a group of scavenging prehistoric people. We follow their rituals for the next ten minutes or so (including the yearly ‘death by stoning’ of their queen’s consort) until a flying croquet ball unaccountably lands in front of them. The repercussions of this mundane event are, for a little time at least, as life-altering as the monolith had been to the apes in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) or the Coke bottle would be to Jamies Uys’ African bushmen in THE GODS MUST BE CRAZY (1980)…but again, the end result hardly proves itself as enthralling as the former or as funny as the latter.
Admittedly, the interesting ensemble casting of Susan Blakely, Thayer David, Salome Jens, Martin Kove, Sam Waterston and Kathleen Widdoes does work rather admirably where – as inexplicable as the central conceit of THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL itself – we see these brutes coming upon an abandoned mansion in the woods which they start exploring and, seemingly soon after, change into the socialite-types seen in that prologue with the requisite immaculate English diction! The screen also reverts back to color at this point setting the stage for a long society party segment with its typical show of the malaises of the civilized world in this ‘modern’ age (greed, lust, power, jealousy, etc.). Within the film’s context, I guess, the fact that one (or perhaps two) of the guests seem to be in drag for no good reason can be excused but I have to say I was startled to see included towards the end a steamy lesbian encounter in a car which, unsurprisingly, heralds the start of the savages’ regression to their original uninhibited state.
